HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED HER SPOTS
by Minisinoo
Summary: PowerSwap Alternate Universe. A different Scott, a different Jean. Montague and Capulet. Are they still who they are, if they aren't who we recognize? Retelling of X1, novella
1. Till We Have Faces

**TILL WE HAVE FACES**   
**Minisinoo**

**Warning & Notes:** There will be a total of seven parts/chapters that will retell _X1_. **BE AWARE** . . . this is an **_alternate universe_** (AU), based on a challenge I issued in early December to swap powers among the X-Men, yet avoid obvious power switches (Scott getting Jean's telepathy, etc.). For the curious, the details of the challenge can be found on my website under the Short Fiction, bottom of that page: "PowerSwap Challenge." There have been over 50 stories submitted plus some amazing manipulated artwork, and they're still coming in, some are AU serials -- several stories set in the same universe.   


Enormous thanks to Bren Kuebler, for reading over this and offering her perspective as a professional translator. All errors are my own.  


* * *

  
**Blu-bell:** So, can you meet me tonight? 

The message pops up right in the middle of my computer screen and I frown. I hate it when I'm interrupted, and she knows it, but she also knows she can get away with it.

** Cypher77:** I WAS working.  
** Blu-bell:** You're always working. You work too much, *doctor*. 

And I have to smile at that. She has me. But it's only in the virtual world that I ever feel truly free, unimpeded by my handicap. I love my work. She knows that, too.

**Cypher77:** What are you up to, that you're blinging me in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon?   
**Blu-bell:** Ah, ah! That would be telling. But can you meet me? Or are you too busy?   
**Cypher77:** For you? Never too busy. Name the time and place, and I'll be there.   
**Blu-bell:** Or be square? Which you are, you know. Terribly, terribly square.   
**Cypher77:** You like me that way. Admit it.   
**Blu-bell:** I do. I like you from the top of your badly-parted hair to the toes of your penny loafers. Usual place, and, ah -- one o'clock? Is that too late? 

I sigh, afraid to ask her what she's up to, that it has to be so late. And I have to be up by six tomorrow to walk to the station and catch the Metro to downtown. But there's still no question about my answer. 

**Cypher77:** See you then.

There's a pause that stretches, then abruptly a, "This user has disconnected," sign pops up. She comes and goes, stealing in and out of my life, but she's never gone long. She told me once that I was the flame and she was the moth and loving me was going to get her killed. It was in one of her more bitter moments. I doubt it will get her killed, but it might get her caught and arrested. She's more likely to get killed doing the other things she never confesses to but I read about after the fact sometimes in the newspaper. And there are days I do think about turning her in, just to keep her safe, but I never have, and I won't so long as I don't have anything concrete to accuse her of, and she knows all that, as well. So far, she's never told me anything I couldn't honorably keep to myself, and I haven't gone looking for anything I'd have to report, but I worry that a day may come when I'll have to. And what would I do then? 

Now, I return to my current job, which involves a new educational program on African cultures for the Smithsonian's interactive computer displays. I'm translating traditional Zulu, Yoruba and Swaheli fables and folktales into English, French and Spanish. It's fun, struggling to get not just the meaning, but the tone, rhythm and nuances, too. There's a lovely dry humor to many of these stories that gets lost in most translations I've seen, becoming just flat, not funny. But the Trickster Spider is _funny_, and I want museum visitors to _get_ that.

  
I work out of a borrowed mop closet that pretends to be an office, or an office that pretends to be a mop closet, I haven't decided which yet. In truth, I don't have to be on museum property at all to do this, but I like being here. It would be far too easy for me to hole up in my apartment and hide from the aural world behind a computer monitor. Choosing to work on-grounds keeps me connected, plus it allows me to people watch during my breaks -- a favorite pastime. Have computer, will travel. Especially if it's to a museum. 

I consult all over the city, including for the government, but I prefer to work for museums. It's not as if Washington, D.C. doesn't have a museum or three (or fifty), and I know my way around almost every one. The long-time staff at several knows me, too.

Just now, I sit up as someone appears in the doorway. I keep my door partly open because I can't hear anyone knocking. It's a young girl, probably summer help. I don't recognize her and she seems hesitant. "Dr. Summers?" she says, as if she doubts the young guy sitting in a closet with a laptop propped on his knees can really be the linguistic whiz who knows twenty-seven languages in five language families -- and those are just the ones he admits to on his _vitae_. 

Amused by her doubt, I nod and smile.

She blushes and -- frustratingly -- looks _down,_ at her feet. "I hate to bother you, but, um . . ." I have to lean forward and twist my head so I can still watch her mouth, and noticing, she jerks her chin up. "Sorry. My boss asked me to come ask you if, uh, you might know, um, _Arabic_?" It's clear from her expression that she has her doubts. 

Grinning, I grab my pad and stand, making a 'Lead on,' gesture. "Wow, you do?" she says, but doesn't wait for my nod before trotting off. I follow her out towards the central rotunda of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. I think she might be trying to talk to me along the way, but she keeps walking ahead or turning away while speaking so I catch no more than snatches of whatever she's saying. She's not trying to be rude, she's just not thinking. Most people don't. I'm used to it.

She takes me to the gift shop where a pair of middle-aged women in full Muslim burkas are standing near the register. One is gripping the hand of a squirmy boy, and a harried looking employee is trying to wait on other customers who insist on stopping to gawk at the women. The shop manager, Becky, approaches me as I enter. This isn't the first time she's asked for my help, though translating the occasional odd language for gift shop staff isn't part of my job description. I don't mind. In fact, I enjoy it. Normally. This situation looks a bit tenser than usual, especially as it involves Muslims in a post-9/11 world, but the hurdles of language barriers often create tension anyway and that's precisely why I don't mind doing this kind of thing. I like watching comprehension uncloud faces, displacing the nervous doubt that springs from a failure to communicate. 

Just now, Becky launches into an explanation, making sure that she's facing me the whole time. "Their boy accidentally knocked a porcelain statue off a display case and broke it, and now they're refusing to pay for it. They keep acting like they can't understand, but surely they understand that if they broke something, they're responsible for it! They're just trying to get out of paying."

Well, they might have been trying to get out of paying, but that didn't mean they were pretending not to understand on purpose. Nonetheless, we had a problem of a different sort. Propping my pad on my hip, I scribble: _Can't read lips behind a veil._

She stares at the pad a moment, then puts her own hand over her mouth . . . which effectively cuts off whatever _she's_ saying. Realizing what she's done, she drops the hand. "Sorry. Can't you just explain to them that you have to read their lips?"

_In what language?_ I write. 

"Oh." She understands now. "I'm not sure. Arabic?"

Sighing explosively, I resist rolling my eyes. Even if wearing a full burka narrows down the probabilities, there are still a good dozen different languages or dialects that they might speak. Yet I can't explain to them that I can't read their lips if they don't move the veil, because I have no idea what language they _do_ speak, and I can't figure out that language until they move the damn veil. 

"How about the kid?" Becky asks.

_Good thought,_ I write. 

As soon as the two of us approach, the women begin chattering hopefully, but won't look me in the face. I'm a strange man. All I can read from their body language is what I'd expect -- they know they're in trouble and they're scared. I look down at the boy and smile. He smiles back, but doesn't say anything. He's probably too young to be able to read and write. Kneeling in front of him, I point to my chest. "Scott." I know my voice sounds odd, but I can usually make myself understood clearly for a few words. I haven't always been deaf, yet the accident that took my hearing happened when I was still young -- twenty years ago -- and if one can't hear his own voice, after a while, he forgets how to form words correctly. I don't speak much, either, to practice. I'm too self-conscious. Yet I figure the boy can understand a name at least.

"I'm Ihsan," he replies. "Are you gonna help my mommy and grandma?" 

It's _Luri_, for God's sake. He's speaking Bairanvand Luri, and they must have been from Iran. I hope one of the women can read Farsi -- Persian -- since my Luri is rather weak. I only recognize it at all because it _is_ a dialect of Farsi. But surely, since most of the nomadic Lurs -- Muslim gypsies -- are poor, any family able to travel to America must be wealthy enough for a good education. Standing, I smile at the boy again and point to my ears, miming a 'closed' gesture, then point to my pad. Turning, I lay it on the register and begin to write in the language of ancient Fars: _Begging your pardon, but I am deaf. I hate to ask, but I must read your lips to understand you, and the veil is in the way._

I offer the pad to the elder with a small bow and don't make any attempt to meet the gaze of either woman. The elder glances at the pad, black eyes narrow behind wrinkles, then passes it to her daughter and pulls the grandson closer to her dark-clad body. Apparently the younger woman can read it, and in the face of necessity, lifts the bottom of her veil enough to explain the situation. I watch only her mouth, careful to avoid her eyes and further insult. 

As it turns out, they weren't trying to get away without paying. They simply aren't carrying cash or credit cards. Their menfolk, however, are, and all three of them (grandfather, father and uncle) arrive from somewhere else in the museum even while we're talking. Or rather, talking and writing. They ignore Becky to eye me with skepticism and a little hostility. Yet as the men speak English perfectly well, I leave Becky to sort out the situation and turn to exit the gift shop. I must pass through a small crowd that's gathered to watch. I suppose it's not everyday one sees a deaf translator.

As I pass a nondescript young woman with curly dark hair, she smiles at me and her brown eyes flash a vivid, cat-reflective green for just an instant. 

Shocked, my mouth falls open.

It lasts only a second, and sticking the pad under my arm, I grab her by the elbow to propel her out the door. Beyond, by the big elephant display occupying the entry area, I stop us both, then sign, _What are you doing here _now_? I thought we were meeting later?_

_I had to see you_, she signs back.

_It's not safe. What if --_

_-- someone saw us? Someone who? And what would they see? You talking to some dark-haired girl._

Sighing out in a gust, I look back in the direction of the hall leading to my closet office. _You didn't come here just because you couldn't wait ten hours to see me._

Her eyes are shrewd and she smiles a little, handing me a paper. It's a memo from someone on Capitol Hill. I don't ask how she got it. Reading it through, I feel my blood go cold and I whisper soundlessly, "Mutant registration?"

She signs, _Let's go to the coffee shop._

I nod and we weave our way around tired parents and hoards of children, up through the dinosaur displays to the coffee shop tucked away in a corner. My employee badge nets us a small discount, but they still charge a ridiculous fee for a cup of coffee. Normally, I bring my own in a thermos. Jean insists on paying. "You're a starving, too-honest academic," she says, which makes me grin. She has no more money than I do. Neither of us does what we do for the paycheck. The place is crowded with only one table left near a window in the hot, glaring sun of a summer mid-afternoon. Beneath the table's polyurethane top is a display describing fossilized flowers. Someone, I think idly, should add a translation or two, at least in Spanish and French.

I ought to be back in my office, working, but that's my own sense of duty speaking. In truth, my job allows a lot of latitude and Jean sits down across from me, shaking back her wavy hair. "Remind me to pick a form with a bob-cut next time," she mutters. 

It makes me smile. "I like long hair." For her, I speak aloud. She rolls her eyes but I can tell she's amused.

"Should I try Lady Godiva?" 

"Only if she's blue. And naked."

If we didn't have a table (and coffee) between us, I think she might hit me. She settles for kicking me -- hard -- underneath. "Ow," I mouth. But she's one of the few people before whom I'll vocalize. She's never laughed at the way I sound, and never would. She told me once that she likes my voice, so I whisper poetry to her in bed in every beautiful language I can think of: Portuguese, Arabic, Bantu, French, Iroquois. She eats it up. Then makes me translate. Then fucks my brains out. It's a pretty good arrangement, in my opinion. 

"So," she says, and her eyes drop to the memo lying on the table between us, but she makes sure her mouth is still where I can see it. Jean remembers things like that. She doesn't forget and turn away when speaking, and she avoids driving me down roads in the dark. At least, not actual roads. The emotional road we've been traveling for three years is a different matter. Neither of us can see an end to it -- not one we like -- but we can't seem to stop the car, either.

"This bill has backing, Scott. It'll go to the floor of the House, and the Senate. It may even pass. I think it will pass." She raises her eyes again, a stranger's eyes, but Jean behind them. For just a moment, they phase viridescent. I love her eyes -- her _real_ eyes. She says she loves mine, though I think they're a rather boring blue. Nothing exotic like hers. "When are you going to stop believing in Charles' dream and wise up?" she asks. "When they come to brand you and take you away? They _know_ about you. If this mutant registration becomes law, you'll have to register, or they'll arrest you." 

I glance out the window. "I know. But what else can I do? They'll keep fearing us as long as they don't know what we're like. And they can't know what we're like if they never _see_ us, meet us, talk to us, eat dinner with us. Hearts aren't changed by rhetoric, Jean, or ideology. They're changed by knowing people, understanding them -- speaking their language." I turn back to watch her and the high track lights wink on the gold hoops in her ears. Jean's a perfectionist in her forms. She thinks of everything from jewelry to pantyhose to watches and rings. I wish I could put a ring on her finger that was real. "Skulking around in shadows isn't going to help."

Her smile is wise and wry. "And what would be the result, do you think, if I walked out into the museum lobby today as _myself_? The children would run screaming." 

I can't resist smiling. "And the men would stop and stare."

"Chauvinist." She frowns. "They wouldn't, you know. I have scales." 

"You're beautiful."

"No, I'm not. Men want me because I can be anyone they fantasize." 

"Not me."

"You're weird." But it's said fondly. 

And that's why we're sitting here, together, despite everything. I don't want whatever face she's wearing today. I want the Jean behind it, the girl who was home-schooled so the other children wouldn't throw rocks at her. She'd been born scaled and blue, and the doctors had thought her the victim of some strange disease. The first days of her life had been spent isolated in a neonatal unit, hooked up to so many machines, she'd looked like an infant cyborg. The years after hadn't been much better, and to this day, Jean hates hospitals. She learned first aid so she didn't have to visit them, and I've seen her stitch up her own flesh or reset a broken finger just to avoid a doctor's office. (Never mind that going to a doctor might mean she'd have to tell them how she'd gotten cut, or shot, or her fingers broken.)

In any case, her childhood experiences had been before 'mutant' became a distinct category, and her family had money. They'd been able to keep reporters away and have certain records deep-sixed. Later, Jean herself had seen to it that those same records were outright altered or destroyed, so there _was_ no concrete proof of a little blue girl born in Annadale-on-Hudson, even if the hospital employees could vouch for it. No records meant that she -- unlike me -- could escape a dragnet registration, which was ironic because in our natural forms, I was the passer. She didn't even look human, though the heart that beat under her skin was no different than mine, and dear to me. 

In any case, like Rapunzel, she'd grown up in a private tower, protected to death by her parents until early adolescence, when the _true_ nature of her peculiar form had manifested -- more or less by accident. Then Rapunzel had escaped her old tower by locking herself in a new one -- a form that wasn't hers. She'd needed so desperately to be loved and accepted, and her parents had been delighted with her emerging metamorph skills, moving downstate where her father took a new professorial position with less pay just so Jean could start over -- have a normal life. She'd gone to public school, become the popular girl, the class valedictorian. Intelligence was her birthright, and with her mutation, she could look like anyone she wanted, as well. So she had. A tall, stately girl with auburn hair and a perfect, heart-shaped face. That's her habitual form, the one I associate with her almost as much as the one that's her own -- blue scales, green eyes and fiery hair -- because it's the form she employed for almost a year after meeting me.

Yet the blue child behind the perfect mask had learned the meaning of irony, and hated the ones who loved her illusions even while clinging to those illusions. She knew her parents had sacrificed much for her, yet they also wanted her to conform, be normal, lead a respectable life because she could. She'd needed to love herself for herself. And as much as I understood her parents' concern for her happiness, it angered me. She was who she was now, I believed, because they'd made her that way. Even at family gatherings, she tells me they want her to morph. Why? It's not as if they don't all know what she really looks like. 

In recent years, she's discovered how many children were rejected altogether, and has softened her opinion. It's hard to realize one's parents are human, and can err, but that's a knowledge she's come to as she's aged. When younger, she was self-righteous in her resentment. And in her sophomore year of college, she met a poli-sci professor who saw through her disguise, and didn't flinch at her real face. He'd called her beautiful and took her under his wing, taught her what 'mutant' meant, and convinced her that she shouldn't have to hide, should be proud of her gifts. Yet he'd also reinforced her fear that if anyone 'normal' saw her real face, they'd hate her, call her a monster, and the unique combination of her brilliance and her metamorph abilities was irresistible to him. He'd trained her in how to use them to further his own cause, shaping her into his private spy, and her life now is just as much one of shadows and secrets and seemings as it would have been if she'd followed her parents' advice. But a lot less safe.

His name was Erik Lehnsherr. And I hate him for what he did to her. 

My own story is simpler. I fell out of a plane and woke up deaf and alone, but with a new ability to unravel any pattern. What's that old truism? 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." I could understand anyone, but had no one left, and a world that should have presented me with no barriers was forever walled in silence. I became a special-needs warden of the state. Special-needs children are more expensive to foster as we require equipment other kids don't, and few foster families want us. My apartment now is modified with devices that allow me to live independently -- a doorbell rigged to make the lights blink, a knock sensor, TDD service and a strobe for the phone (though my new phone with text-messaging made TDD obsolete), and a 'sonic-boom' alarm clock. Jean thinks that last one's funny. I don't have hearing aids, though. There's not much point. My ears work perfectly, for all the good it does me. The problem lies in damage to the auditory portions of my brain. I have no hearing at all -- 'stone deaf.'

Yet I soon learned that my ability to recognize patterns went in a very particular direction -- I had a mutant gift for language. ANY kind of language, from linguistics to computers to simple body language. It made learning ASL easy, and I branched out from there. Being able to understand people led me down a different road than Jean. She'd been forced to hide to be accepted, learned obfuscation as a survival tactic and mimicry instead of understanding. Me, I can't _avoid_ understanding others, it seems. I've lived my life as a cypher, explaining people to one another, and sometimes I wonder who _I_ am, or if there is a me beyond my function as a walking Babel Fish. 

But Jean's interested in _me_. Her own self-focus drove her to uncover mine. She first noticed me on the Metro. Trained to observe everything, she'd gotten curious about the young man who bought six foreign language newspapers a day and speed-read them all on the way to work, and she'd begun following me -- apparently for weeks, though I hadn't realized it was the same person because she'd kept shifting forms. Finally, one night almost three years ago, she'd followed me back to my Georgetown apartment and, inside the building, approached me in the hallway to ask, "Do you know what you are?"

Her form that evening had been her most common public face, the one on her driver's license, the one the world knew as 'Jean Grey,' and the tall, intense-eyed woman had daunted me a little. I'd looked her up and down and raised my eyebrows. 

"Oh, I know _who_ you are," she'd said. "You're Dr. Scott Summers. Twenty-six years old, holds two Ph.Ds from Johns Hopkins in linguistics and computer programming, hired sometimes by the U.S. Government for translation and cultural advice but prefers to work for academic and public service institutions. Unmarried, parents deceased, no known living relatives. You like cats, Sweet Tarts and wear a size 42 suit jacket because your shoulders are wide, but you have to hem the sleeves."

She'd scared the shit out of me, frankly. I'd thought I had a very odd (if pretty) stalker. _Who are you and how do you know these things?_, I'd written on the pad I kept handy and passed it to her. And that had stopped her cold, staring at my words. Somewhere in all her research into who I was, she'd failed to put two and two together and realize I was _deaf_. Now, years later, we laugh about how she'd committed such an enormous oversight when she'd gone to the trouble of finding out my shoe size. 

Then, however, she'd been hugely embarrassed, but hadn't pitied me. There's a difference, and I can tell. Believe me, I can tell. She'd said, "I've been watching you and I know who you are. But do _you_ know _what_ you are? You're a mutant."

I'd written, _I know._

"So am I," she'd said.

_I know_, I'd written back. 

"How?"

_Elementary, My Dear Watson,_ I scribbled (taking longer),_ I figured either you're a mutant, too, or you're morally opposed to mutants, but since you aren't spouting scripture or pseudo-science at me yet, it must be the former._

And she'd laughed. Taking my pen, she'd scribbled her email address on my pad and given it back to me. "I'd write my phone number on your hand, but I don't think it'd do much good."

And _I'd_ laughed. The fact she could make a joke about my deafness without either apology or self-consciousness is the reason I saved that address and wrote to her. She wrote me back, and email became our primary mode of communication. It still is. _Most_ of my interaction is virtual, in fact, because my handicap isn't obvious there. I can write to almost anyone, anywhere. The world is my oyster . . . as long as it reaches me over a LAN line. 

I didn't see her again for five months, but we talked everyday, and sometimes more often than that. Perhaps because she'd failed to note the obvious, she became very nosey about everything in my life. I was her own private puzzle to solve. We argued politics, discussed literature and science, and bemoaned the state of Washington-area roads. She told me about growing up in New York (though at the time, she left out a few things). I told her about growing up in Nebraska. She asked me, with honest curiosity, what it was like to live deaf. So I told her. Once, she asked me if I missed music. I didn't write back for three days. She filled up my inbox and transcription service with apologies, but I wasn't angry. Music was just the one thing I really regretted losing and I found it hard to talk about that. Yet whenever I asked to see her again, she always said, "No."

The 'no's persisted for five months, then I got an unexpected 'yes,' and we made plans to meet on the Washington Mall outside the Air and Space Museum. She was wearing red and the same face she'd worn the first time, though I didn't realize then that it wasn't her real one, and she smiled when I walked up to her. Then she spoke to me. 

In _my_ language.

Sign language. 

She'd spent those five months taking a class in ASL and learning about my world. Only one other person had ever reached out to me that way, and it had been easy for him. The rest of the time, I'd lived my life interpreting for others, reaching into their worlds, their words, their perceptions.

Jean had reached back into mine. 

I fell head over heels in love with her right then (though really, I think I already was), yet it took her another two months to show me her real face, and it took me another three to let her hear my speaking voice. And I'm not sure how long it was before we realized we were living on opposites sides of a big, _big_ fence.

Montague and Capulet. 

X-Man and Brotherhood.

You see, the _first_ person who'd reached out to me had been Charles Xavier. I'd been in college, too. At fifteen. The brilliant, silent, small boy who sat at the back of the class and never took notes because he had an eidetic memory. It goes along with my pattern recognition. I don't remember everything. No one remembers everything; that's a myth. Instead, we remember in certain ways. For me, it's in words and patterns. But don't ask me to remember a painting unless I'm told the name of the painting and painter, then I remember the name and painter, not the painting itself -- or not any better than the average person. Jean, though, she recalls _images_. If she sees it, she can pull it out of her memory. That's the nature of _her_ mutation. We're like two halves of one coin, but facing in opposite directions. 

In any case, just as Jean had been approached by Erik Lehnsherr, so Charles Xavier had approached me, told me what I was, and assured me that I wasn't a freak. I was gifted. Of course, I'd been called "gifted" all my life -- right along with "hearing impaired" -- so that wasn't new. But he'd meant it in a new way, and he'd given me self-understanding, and a dream. I could use my talents as a bridge between humans and mutants -- a translator, an ambassador. That dream freed me finally to live in a world of no walls, and invite others to live there as well, leaving behind the fences of language and miscommunication -- of fear.

I like to think that Jean is drawn to me because I invite her into that world with me. No masks. No faces that aren't her own. I love her real face and want her to wear it. All the time. I think she's beautiful just as nature made her, but I see her real face too rarely. 

"They'll lock you up, Scott," she says now, fear in her borrowed eyes and voice.

"Maybe," I tell her, then drop into sign language. I'm not above using a little subterfuge myself and I don't want this conversation to be overheard. _They're just afraid. They don't understand us. And they aren't going to understand unless we let them try, but we can't do that if we hide._

Snorting delicately, she leans back in her seat. "You're a dreamer."

_Maybe I am. But someone has to be._ Frowning, I look out the window that opens on the Mall. The sun is in my eyes, but I can make out taxis passing on the road below and lots of pedestrians. I can't see the Capitol from the window at this angle, but I know it's there at one end of the green. _This bill won't pass without a lot of discussion. Maybe I'll ask if I can address the Senate._

Her mouth falls open and she signs, almost roughly, _Are you crazy?_

_Not at all._

Her snort isn't delicate this time; it's explosive with her doubt. _A deaf man will speak for mutant rights?_ It's deliberately cruel, because she's afraid for me. I understand her so well; rage drives her, and a desire for justice, and a fear no less real than that of the humans who hate us. Fear builds walls. _What makes you think they'll let you up on the bema in the first place, or will listen if they do?_

"Oh," I say aloud. "If Dr. Scott Summers, special consultant in linguistics for the White House applies the right lobby pressure and requests to speak, I think they'll let me up there." 

I am the Cypher. There are no walls for me. I'm the bridge that spans them. _Believe in me, Jean._

There are tears in her eyes. "I've always believed in you. It's the rest of them I don't believe in." She blinks to rid herself of the tears she thinks of as a weakness, and her hands rise, signing fast. _But _you_ believe _this_, Dr. Summers -- if that damn bill passes, I'm not letting them take you. I won't let them come in the night and take you away. Words might be your domain, but getting out of traps is mine. You do what you need to do, and I'll do what I must._

I know she'll try. And I'll resist because, like Socrates, I believe in the democracy. _If I speak, will you come listen?_

"You know I will." She rises. She's done with her coffee, and I need to get back to my office anyway. Her fingers cross mine, a subtle caress. We've learned to be subtle in this affair that should never have been. "Later?" she asks. 

"Wouldn't miss it, Bluebell," I whisper soundlessly. It's not her code name. It's my name for her.

We'll meet in another place and she'll wear another face. And maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to talk her into renting a motel room where we can lock the door and she can wear her own face while I make love to her. We won't talk about politics there, or our different philosophies, or the threat of the future. We probably won't talk at all. Words aren't always necessary, to communicate. 

I ought to know.  


* * *

  
**Afternotes:** Scott, of course, has Doug Ramsey's power, and Jean has Raven Darkholme's (Mystique), although I couldn't resist changing her eye color to its classic comic green. It's not entirely clarified, but Erik Lehnsherr has Jean's powers -- mild telepathy and telekinesis -- while Xavier has his own, and even if she didn't appear in the final version, Ororo has Erik's powers and would bear the name Polaris. 

A comment on Scott as Cypher. Doug's powers are similar to Scott's own, in terms of a gift for patterns, but as they work themselves out in language, not geometry, I thought that would have an enormous impact on Scott's personality, making his strategic gifts _social_ rather than spacial. Hence he's not a military strategist here, but a budding diplomat. Also, while I realize the comic Doug could understand any language within moments of hearing it, I've made Scott's gift a little more reasonable. Scott can learn any language extremely rapidly, and has the mutant ability to learn it fluently, if he puts in a bit of effort. But it's not instantaneous. He's not a Star Trek Universal Translator. :-D

As for Jean, the fact that her parents didn't reject her would soften her temperament, I think, yet I was reminded of what Raven had said in the first movie about going to school, and no matter how much support Jean got at home, the fact she's only accepted when she's not herself would, I believe, alter her fundamental personality, especially for a girl who needs to be loved, making her far more cynical.

**Feedback always welcome (of course).  
**


	2. He Who Has Ears to Hear

**HE WHO HAS EARS TO HEAR ...****  
Minisinoo**  


**Notes:** **** The title references a Biblical quote, and the debate between Kelly and Scott borrows from the novelization, not just the film.

* * *

  
I've sometimes wondered how Erik and Charles could have been so blind for so long as to what was going on between Scott and me right under their noses. My only explanation is that they trusted us _that much_, because, God knew, we weren't exactly _subtle_ in conducting our affair, even if we thought we were. I was too much in love, and Scott's just no good at lying, period. 

Yet I can't say they were wrong to trust us. You can care about someone, even care deeply, and still think they're utterly wrongheaded. Erik and Charles should know that, as well. But since the beginning, we'd been aware of their friendship. We'd just never told them about ours.

Until today.

I think they're both reeling.

The funny thing is, I wasn't _looking_ for Scott. I just stumbled over him by chance, and we were too deep into the relationship before we realized we had such opposing philosophies -- not to mention conflicting loyalties. You can't fall out of love with someone just because logic says so. And ironically, I think part of the reason I do love him so is also the reason I disagree with him. He has this optimism about the future, and the courage to go with it. That's why he's twenty minutes away from getting up in front of a room full of senators who'll eat him alive. And the crazy thing is, I'm getting up there with him.

Oh, not to speak. I have nothing to say to money-grubbing, dishonest politicians. The democracy might have worked once, but I think it's seriously fucked now. Scott still thinks it's better than the alternative. In any case, I'm following him up there only to be his ears, and not as myself -- either my blue self, or the public Jean Grey. I'm just a hired interpreter, as far as anyone else knows. Technically, Scott doesn't even need me. He's speaking aloud. That's amazing enough in itself -- or shows his level of desperation -- and we've spent hours on end, working at his enunciation (he's not half so bad as he thinks he is), but he can do his own signing and reads lips perfectly well. Yet I just . . . I need to know he's hearing _exactly_ what they say . . . not just what they let him see that they're saying. Whether or not he likes to admit it, Scott _is_ handicapped. He can do an amazing number of things by himself, and do them so well, he fools people into thinking he can hear. But he _can't_ hear. And I'm along to see to it that they don't take advantage of him for that.

And that's how Erik and Charles found out. Erik had wanted me to sit in the audience today to monitor people, the same as he plans to. Naturally, I can't be in two places at once, and while I could have lied and told him that I was where he wanted me, Scott and I discussed it, and decided we were tired of playing games. We're in love with each other, and they need to know that. If anyone can understand, it's them. So we told them this morning.

Right now, they're more mad than understanding, I'm afraid. I find it funny (pot calling the kettle black), but Scott's upset. Yet we haven't betrayed them; we'd be betraying _ourselves_ if we did. Scott _believes_ in Xavier's dream, that peaceful co-existence is possible. And I believe history proves him wrong; it's going to take something drastic. Anti-Semitism and hounding of gypsies was _accepted_ in Europe up until the holocaust. It took the deaths of millions to show people how ugly hate looks, but I have no plans to become a martyr to mutant acceptance. There's got to be a better way, a more proactive way than Xavier's . . . and Scott's. Scott's a man of words. I'm a woman of actions.

But he's not just a man of words, he's also a man OF his word, and he's upset right now because he lied (by omission) to the man who'd trusted him most. Once Charles gets over his anger, I suspect he'll be more willing to forgive Scott than Scott is to forgive himself. But now, Scott's staring at the opposite wall as we sit in a pair of seats in a rear conference room, waiting to be called, and if he keeps grinding his teeth like that, he'll need dental work. Not to mention that he'll be too emotionally scattered to concentrate on the hearings. But Charles is in the room and I wish the old man would leave; he's making Scott worse, not better, and I know Charles can hear what I'm thinking if he wants, so I project it in his direction and, when he looks up at me, I smile. It's not friendly.

I believe it unsettles him that I don't care if he reads my mind. He's used to people feeling intimidated by his telepathy -- at least a little. He relies on that, even if he won't admit he does. Yet I've lived with a telepath for years, despite the fact Erik's telepathy isn't as strong as Charles'. They have a peculiar code of ethics, telepaths, and I can understand it, even respect it, so Charles doesn't scare me. I have a pretty good idea of what he'll do. And what he won't. There are things I won't do, too, even though I can. I won't fuck for secrets. I'm a spy, not a whore, and even if I wear another face, I avoid wearing it in bed. And while I've killed, yes, I've never assassinated anyone -- and never will. Even Erik can't make me do that, though with my skills, it would be so _very_ easy. I have my limits, and I have to look myself in the mirror each morning. So I understand Charles -- and Erik. Virginia Woolf once said, "To have freedom, we must control ourselves." She was my friend, when I was a girl with a room of my own -- consigned to it, like a tower prison. And I learned to control myself exquisitely.

Now, it's just the three of us in this room and I don't have to keep up pretenses that I'm a mere hiree, so I reach over to touch Scott's arm. He starts. Charles' eyes follow my gesture, then he turns his whole face away. I'm not sure if he's trying to give us privacy, or if he's disgusted. To Scott, I sign, _It'll be okay_. "It" covers a lot of things.

He smiles faintly and nods once, then starts flipping through his notes. He doesn't really need them -- his memory for words is nearly eidetic -- but they're his security blanket. If he were just signing, I'm not sure he'd bother. But he's speaking.

He's _speaking._

Charles still isn't looking at us. Leaning over, getting almost in Scott's face, I sign, _I love you_. His eyes soften and he smiles again, more genuinely. He puts his notes back in the maroon folder sitting on his laptop.

And we wait.

In five minutes, we're called out and led through back halls to the main senate chamber doors. Charles doesn't follow, but we're under the public eye here and I'm reduced again to his assistant and interpreter. After another brief wait, we're led into the wide chamber with the senators at their tables on the floor and observers in the balcony above, and Scott's introduced. "Scott Summers, who holds doctoral degrees in both linguistics and computer science from Johns Hopkins. I think several of us in the senate, maybe most of us, are familiar with Dr. Summers already."

There's polite clapping as Scott steps up to the podium and plugs his laptop into the projector they've provided. He may be giving his speech aloud, but he's too nervous of his voice to engage in extempore verbal after-debate. He fears sounding 'retarded.' Hearing persons make certain assumptions connecting clarity of speech with mental acuity that puts the hearing impaired at a disadvantage. So he'll be typing his replies, as he can type almost as fast as he can speak. I take my own place off to the side as he adjusts the mic, then looks at me, speaking into it: "Testing." People jump and he winces. I gesture to lower his voice and he tries again. "Testing." _Better_, I sign, but indicate lower still.

_Loudness_ is Scott's real problem, and when he's nervous, he gets louder. After all, he can't hear himself. "I'm sorry," he says now to the room a large. "A little volume adjustment there." It's meant as humor and Scott usually wins sympathy by joking about his deafness, but only a few people laugh. That's not good. Senator Robert Kelly of Indiana -- who introduced this damn bill -- is sitting there looking smug, and I want to beat the smirk off his face. But I can't. Not yet, not here. His day is coming, though. Soon.

"I want to thank you for letting me address you today," Scott begins, "since the question of mutant registration doesn't precisely involve _linguistics_." There's another strangled laugh and my hands flow around his words, shaping them with my fingers. It's for show. I'm superfluous to everyone but Scott.

"While I was introduced as _Dr_. Summers, I'm not here to speak in any real professional capacity. I'm sure Dr. McCoy already presented a thorough scientific explanation of mutant genetics and origins, and I'd be a fool to try adding to that. I'm just a translator. But maybe that's useful in itself. Translators are bridges. I've spent my life throwing down walls of incomprehension. That's what we _do_, translators. We make people intelligible to one another.

"I don't just translate between languages. Sometimes I translate between communities -- the hearing community and the deaf community. I'm an ambassador. I explain to hearing persons how it feels to live in a silent world. I can't hear when they call my gate at the airport. I can't hear station announcements on the metro or the Blue Light special in K-Mart." A few giggles greet that. "I can't hear musak in department store elevators -- and maybe that's a blessing -- but I can't hear my best friends' voice, either. And that's not a blessing." The crowd's listening to him now, and it's amazing, how he does this -- pulls them in. "I can't hear 'excuse me' when someone needs to get by in an aisle, or 'hello' in the street, or 'can I help you?' in a store, and I need a placard that reads, 'I _am_ deaf, I'm not ignoring you,' instead of the reverse. I don't even have hearing aids to give people a clue -- hearing aids don't do me any good. So people make assumptions, and if you work in the hearing world, you learn patience, and not to take offense. You learn to see the world as others might. You _translate_."

The room is silent. He has them. I don't know how he knew this was the right approach, but he knew. They're listening, and they're not hostile. Not anymore. Kelly is aware, and looking sour. Oh, Scott, be careful. Hell hath no fury like a politician upstaged.

"But I'm not here to talk to you about being deaf. I'm here to talk to you about being a mutant, because I'm not just a deaf translator, I'm a _mutant_ deaf translator. I came to put a human face on the so-called 'mutant problem.'"

The chamber has gone even more silent. While many senators already knew he was a mutant -- it's not a secret -- the fact he just announced it on national television, even if just C-SPAN, is significant. No one can fault Scott's bravery. There's mutant registration and then there's mutant _declaration,_ and I hope to hell he knows what he's doing.

"My gift, you see, _is_ my facility with languages. My mutation is pattern recognition, particularly in language. It's fate's irony that an accident took my hearing. I wasn't born that way. But I was born a mutant, and I went into linguistics to become a bridge. It's a gift, not a curse. It's a gift no less than if I'd been born with a gene for extra height and agility and played for the Lakers, or could calculate the curve of a kick to put it in a goal like Beckham, or could write symphonies in my head and never have to correct them later like Mozart, or could translate life to canvass like Rembrandt.

"Talent is a difficult thing to quantify. Who knows where it comes from? Maybe it doesn't really matter. I believe what matters is how I _use_ what I have, not how I came by it. My _vitae_ says I'm fluent in twenty-seven languages. That's a little fib. Well, it's not a fib -- I really can read twenty-seven languages, and I dabble in a dozen more. But the truth is I can learn _any_ language, just give me three weeks of intensive immersion. I've only gotten up to twenty seven so far.

"What do I do with this gift? I translate for museums, mostly. Sometimes I translate for the State Department, if they call me. It's a terrible power, you know, conjugating verbs." Ted Kennedy snorts, and it sets off a ripple of laughter. "I could take over the world in Swaheli!" The laughter bubbles and Scott smiles. "The truth is, I'm not very dangerous, unless you want me to _talk_ you to death --"

And before Scott can continue, Kelly is on his feet. Apparently, he's had enough, or realizes he's about to lose his advantage to Scott Summers' golden tongue. It's an unusually rude gesture to interrupt a speaker, but Scott isn't the only one who understands a dramatic gesture. "Mr. Summers," Kelly says. "We're well-aware of your generous and manifold contributions to the Smithsonian in the area of translations. But I'm not sure what that has to do with the matter at hand."

Turning to Scott, I sign Kelly's words, but Scott isn't even looking at me. He's leaning into the podium and his lips are pursed while he watches Kelly. Abruptly, he lets go and turns to his computer, pulling it around to type: _I think it has everything to do with the matter at hand. If you'd permit me to *finish*, that is._ And I have to admire Scott for his cool. But then, he knew he'd face opposition, and Scott thrives on anything to do with words, including debate.

"The matter at hand," Kelly goes on, ignoring Scott, "is a question -- Are mutants dangerous?" Ostensibly, Kelly is speaking to Scott, but he's looking around the Senate chamber and there's murmuring from the balcony, among the observers. I sign his words for Scott.

_A question that I was trying to answer,_ Scott types in reply. _I was trying to point out --_

"Oh, I don't think anyone's scared of _you_, Mr. Summers." Which is a loaded comment if I ever heard one. "But there are dangerous mutants out there -- would you deny it? You're willing to step forward because, as you yourself stated, you don't have a very powerful mutation --"

Scott's eyes narrow and he pounds his keyboard: _I don't have an overtly *dangerous* mutation, senator. 'Power' depends on one's definitions. Which is mightier? The sword or the word? Wouldn't you say Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, Muhammad, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King are men of *words*? Yet they changed the world. You can't change the world with a spear, Senator Kelly -- or a law. You only conquer it. And all empires fall. You change the world by talking . . . and listening with an open mind, regardless of whether your ears work right._

And he just derailed Kelly's arguments right back onto his own track, but Kelly won't permit him to stay there. "My apologies, Mr. Summers. I didn't mean to insult your . . . gift."

Low blow, Kelly, I think as I sign Kelly's response.

_No insult taken,_ Scott replies, generously. He can't let Kelly's words stand and he knows it. _I simply wanted to be perfectly clear about our definitions, since it's difficult to communicate unless you understand the words you're using -- which I ought to know. Power and danger aren't synonyms. My cat is dangerous to the toilet paper roll in the bathroom -- tends to shred it -- but I have the power of putting it up where he can't reach it._

And that gets laughter, while Kelly looks as pissed as Scott's cat deprived. Scott's just not taking the man _seriously_ enough, which annoys him no end. "But would you deny that some mutants are dangerous?"

_Of course not,_ Scott replies. _But so's a twelve-year-old with his dad's pistol and too many viewings of John Wayne._

"That's why we have gun registration in this country, Mr. Summers."

_But gun registration isn't going to stop someone from irresponsible gun *handling_*_, Senator Kelly. As I'm sure you're well aware, the majority of injuries from firearms in this country occur either as accidents or in situations of domestic violence -- with legally registered weapons._ Scott's fingers hammer the keyboard so hard I can hear the clack-clack a good twenty feet away. This is another of his personal passions. _You *teach* people. You make them responsible. That's called *education*, not registration. Guns aren't toys. And mutations may be a gift, but they're also a responsibility. Asking mutants to register themselves won't achieve anything except exposing them to possible violence from hate crimes. If you want to take care of the mutant 'problem' -- as you insist on calling it -- then you *educate* people, Senator._

"You just used an interesting word," Kelly replies. "You said '_expose_.' But what, I wonder, are mutants trying to _hide_?"

_Well I don't seem to be hiding anything, do I?_ Scott pauses to gesture with one hand towards the cameras. _I just 'exposed' myself on national television. But you can hardly deny that some mutants who've come forward to reveal themselves have been met with fear and hostility . . . even violence. I'm an adult; I make my own choices and take my own chances. But are you prepared to force a fourteen-year-old girl to register as a mutant and then live in terror of being beaten up -- or worse -- after school? We're not criminals, Senator. I've never even had a traffic ticket._

"Funny you should bring up fourteen-year-old girls, Mr. Summers." Kelly leans back and says something to his assistant, a man I know well. I'd been studying him for weeks. Henry Peter Gyrich. Gyrich disappears towards a back table and returns with a folder while Kelly continues to speak. "You talk about your hypothetical fourteen-year-old as if she were defenseless, but" -- Kelly holds up the folder that's been placed in his hand -- "these are _mutants_ we're talking about, not normal people."

Scott's jaw clenches even as Kelly turns his back, holding the folder higher and speaking to the other senators and the balcony audience, not to Scott. Scott's effectively cut off from what he's saying and frustrated, he glances at me. This is why I came -- this moment. I'm not going to let that snake take advantage of Scott's deafness. I sign his words: "Let me show you what mutants are trying to hide, Mr. Summers. A girl from Chicago, one of Mr. Summers' touted fourteen-year-olds, can _walk through walls_. I doubt she has much to worry about from a physical assault, does she? I'd say it's _we_ who need to worry about _her_. What's to stop her from walking into a bank vault? Or the White House? Or our houses? And here" -- He pulls out a photo to wave it -- "this was taken by a police officer in Secaucus, New Jersey. A man in a minor altercation literally melted the car in front of him. These are not isolated incidents."

There's murmuring in the balconies now as Kelly draws his number one weapon against us -- fear. Scott watches my hands and if he can't hear the swell in the balconies, he can see the movement. And I can see the rage in his face. Suddenly, he pushes away his computer and leans over, speaking into the mic again -- "Senator Kelly!" -- and it's _loud_. All his volume control has fled so his words crackle through the room, making people jump. I sign furiously for him to tone it down, but he's not looking at me. "If you intend to have a discussion with me, I'd appreciate it if you'd turn so I can see what you're saying." Startled, the senator has turned, and he's just too surprised to protest. Scott's trumping with the handicapped sympathy card, and maybe it's not fair, but Kelly wasn't playing fair, either. I'm surprised, myself -- but because Scott's talking. He's so upset, he's _talking_, and without a script or prepped enunciation practice. And if he does sound better than most pre-verbal deaf persons, there's still a slightly 'stuffy' tone to his voice and a softness on consonants that's peculiar if one isn't used to it. If they misjudge him for that, I'll skin them all.

"I understand the hearing can forget," he goes on, and he's toned it down finally to a level the speakers don't distort, "but it's generally considered rude to turn your back on a deaf person, even one with a translator." He gestures to me. "Now, as for what you were saying -- you asked what's to stop this young girl from walking into a bank vault? Morals, senator. Yes, she could walk into a bank vault, but the same talent would permit her to walk through a collapsed building looking for survivors. Imagine how many lives her power could save after an earthquake -- or a bombing. It's not _what_ she can do, but _how_ she uses it. And that's not determined by her DNA. We teach our children to be responsible or irresponsible, to be selfless or selfish.

"Children learn what they live. Have you heard that poem? 'If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive . . . if children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty . . .' It goes on, but you get the idea. What I really like is the end, though. 'If children live with acceptance, they learn to find love in the world. If children live with recognition, they learn to have a goal. If children live with sharing, they learn to be generous. If children live with honesty and fairness, they learn what truth and justice are. If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and those around them. If children live with friendliness, they learn that the world is a nice place in which to live . . . With what are your children living?'"

The chamber has gone silent again and Kelly looks at once thunderstruck and furious. Tears prick my own eyes because Scott's speaking from his heart now, and the depth of his conviction shines out of his face. He's the survivor who wants others to survive, the teacher who wants others to understand. _This_ is the man I love. And he's rendered them ashamed, even if only momentarily.

He takes advantage of it, though. "We find in people what we expect. If we expect the worst, then that's what we'll get. Yes, there are mutants who would misuse their powers for their own gain. But there are non-mutants who'd do the same, and I think -- I _believe_ -- that most people, mutant or non-mutant, want to be _good_. We do the best we can do, and if we _expect_ others to use their powers generously, then we'll find more who will than who won't. If we fear people, however, they go on the defensive.

"There's no reason for that. No reason. I enjoy using my gift to help others. I get a kick out of it. I'm not _ashamed_ of what I can do; I'm proud, and want to share it. All I ask is that you permit me to do that. Don't be afraid of me. Gifts are neutral. It's the hearts of men and women that determine how they act -- regardless of whether they have an activated X-gene. Mutant registration says, 'We don't trust you.' It's a pessimistic response, not an optimistic one. Despite everything that's happened to me in my life -- the loss of my family when I was a child, the loss of my hearing -- I remain an optimist. All I ask is for a little optimism from you, as well."

Scott's eyes sweep the chamber as he closes his folder. "Thank you for listening." Then he unplugs his computer and steps down. He's said his piece, even managed to segue right into the original ending of his speech, and (for a wonder) Kelly stayed silent. I doubt the man was convinced, or will remain silent long, but Scott wasn't driven from the podium.

That's important, and he's done all he can do for the moment. But it's not all I can do, all the Brotherhood can do. For us, the fight's just begun.

* * *

**Feedback always welcome (of course).**

  



	3. How the Leopard Changed Her Spots I

**HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED HER SPOTS  
Part I  
****Minisinoo**  


  
**  
Notes:** Thanks to Mara and Avi for airport and hospital info, Naomi for Lilith, Libs and Minarya for checking Ro, and Aelin for Piotr and Ilyana's Russian. Thutmose is for Bren, who helped with the original Cypher story. The manipulation at right was made for me by Meret, the others of Mystique-Jean were made by Elena. Further notes at the end of the fourth part.   
  
Alternating Scott and Jean point-of-view.  


* * *

  
It's not often that I'm called to Xavier's in my professional capacity.

To be sure, I spend time there -- especially at holidays -- and sometimes I play chaperone on field trips. But I can't teach, and Polaris won't let me on the X-team no matter how many times I've proven I'm not helpless. Besides, I prefer the job I have here in Washington; this is where I can do the most good. But today, I got a call for my skills as a translator, and Xavier sent Warren to fetch me and my cat.  


Warren Worthington is an old friend, among the first fellow mutants I ever met, and, like me, has a non-combative power, choosing to help the school without teaching or living there. He employs the connections of birth and wealth instead. When I exit the taxi to meet him at Montgomery County Airpark, he begins explaining almost immediately. "Ro and Logan rescued a pair of kids from Wolverine yesterday."  


_Wolverine?_ I fingerspell, then sign, _Since when does the Brotherhood go after children?  
_

"Charles thinks they want to recruit the boy. It's a pair of siblings, both physical mutations. The elder, the boy, can convert into some kind of organic steel." My eyebrows arch at that. "The girl . . . Well, Hank's still trying to figure her out. Apparently, she absorbs life force, or something. The only person she can touch is her brother -- and only when he's in metal form."

_Why do you need me?_

"They're Russian. The professor's the only one who can talk to them."

_Ah_, I mouth silently while Warren's pilot loads my luggage in the little Leerjet. I take Thutmose out of his box and grip him in my arms though he's squirming and digging into my arm with his claws. He hates to fly, but I can't leave him in my apartment for some unspecified number of days. Jean says I travel too much to have a cat, but he keeps me company, and he's useful. Other people have Seeing-Eye dogs. I have a hearing-ear cat. If I miss the flashing lights when the doorbell rings, Thutmose comes to fetch me. He listens for the phone, too, and takes walks with me -- without a leash. Smartest cat I've ever had.

Once we board, Warren explains the rest of the story. Logan had been up in Canada, shutting down his cabin for the winter months, when he heard about a 'freak boy' making the rounds of cage fighting -- and winning. Unable to resist the challenge, our feral Sabretooth had gone off to investigate, and called for backup. Ro had arrived in time to help him rescue the kids from Victor Creed, the Wolverine. Jean hates the man. He's only nominally controllable, she says, coming and going as he pleases. Erik finds him useful, both for his healing factor and his bloody-mindedness. But like his namesake, he's a loner -- and a weasel. I can't imagine kids in his hands, especially kids who can't speak English. (Not that he speaks much beyond growls himself.)

I wish Jean was around. She might tell me something. Or she might not.

It's been two weeks since the day I spoke before the Senate, and Kelly's registration bill presses onward. The vote's coming soon and it's going to be damn close. I'm afraid the Brotherhood will try something drastic. After my speech, Jean had hugged me despite anyone watching (which I guess was believable as she was supposedly a colleague), then whispered, "I have to be gone for a while. Don't worry if you don't hear from me." But of course I worry. I wish she'd at least send me email, and I'm reminded (again) that she could be arrested, or dead, and I wouldn't know.

I fight in more conventional ways. I show up in senators' offices unannounced when they don't return my letters, or corral them in hallways on Capitol Hill. My face isn't a welcome sight anymore. I'm calling in favors in unprecedented quantities, but it's the only coin I have, and I'm not happy about being pulled away at such a critical juncture, but if Xavier requests it, I come.

It's not a long flight from Washington to New York and beyond the debriefing, Warren and I don't talk much. We both have work to do, and coexist in companionable silence at 19,000 feet while Thutmose leaps back and forth between us, getting in our way. "I hate that cat," Warren tells me, and I smile because I know he doesn't. Warren's the one who gave him to me. God knows I don't make enough to buy a registered show-quality Abyssinian who acts like Egyptian royalty (which is how he got the name Thutmose). Neither of us knew how big he'd get, though, or how much he'd get into everything.

We set down right at the school; they have an old landing strip on the property, though it entails a walk in with both cat and luggage. I don't mind; it's early April in the (relative) country -- still chilly up here, more so than in Washington, and mid-morning light glows verdant through leaf buds, glancing off the blossoms of cherry trees, a riot of delicate pink along an old split-rail fence. I glance at Warren and tap his arm, signing, _How's the vote going to turn out?_

He shakes his head. "I don't know."

_Don't know, or won't say?_

"Don't know, Scott. I don't' see everything. If I knew, I'd tell you. Trust me. Too many loose threads in the future."

_It could go either way?_

"Yes. Somehow . . . these two kids matter." He glances at me. "So does Jean Grey."

I blink, but try to keep the surprise off my face. Of course Xavier would have told them. _How does Jean matter?_

"I don't know. I wish I did." He pauses, then asks. "Do you really love her?"

"Yes," I say aloud.

"Scott, don't you know what she does, what she is --?"

_Don't start with that_, I sign. _I know better than you do. She's not evil, Warren. She's doing what she believes is right. I think she's wrong, she thinks _I'm_ wrong, but we . . . deal. She's not a bad person, and she's not our enemy._

"Not your enemy, maybe." But he has the sense not to say anything else. My jaw tightens.

When we arrive at the mansion, the professor meets us in his office. "My presence is required in Washington, Scott," he says, and I want to ask, _And mine's not?_ He knows, and replies, "You've done what you can; it's my turn now. But I can't leave these new students without any means of communication." He indicates the two kids waiting in his office with him, a young man who towers over all of us, even Warren, and a petite girl with very fair hair who's covered from crown to toe in clothes.

"Piotr and Ilyana Rasputin," the professor says, in Russian. "This is Dr. Summers. He'll be staying here in my place, while I'm away. Dr. Summers will have no trouble understanding you, but he's deaf, so please be sure that you're facing him when you speak. I should return in a few days." Both look dubious but I smile and offer a little wave, mime that I'll be back, and exit with Xavier and Warren. Thutmose follows. The professor is ready to go, his bags waiting in the foyer. Warren is taking him to the city, just as he brought me here. An exchange of place.

_I'll take care of them_, I sign to the professor. I mean more than just the kids in the office.

He smiles, sending telepathically, I_ know you will, Scott. That's why I called you home._

_The thing with Jean --_, I begin.

"Shh," he says aloud, adding, _I trust you_. We've known each other long enough, that's all he needs to say. He and Warren depart and I return to his office to visit with the two kids for a while, asking via written query where they're from, and about their abilities and their experiences on the road, trying to fathom Erik's interest in them. The boy talks while his sister pets Thutmose, getting ruddy fur on her white gloves. Apparently, Piotr's known about his powers a while but was able to remain in his small village in the Ural mountains until Ilyana manifested. A steel boy who could lift several tons with his bare hands was useful in a farming community, but a vampiric girl who stole the life force from others (however accidentally) was something else. She'd put a local boy in a coma after a tentative kiss and her brother had snatched her from a pogrom, fleeing with her by rail across Siberia to seek asylum in Alaska. Why Alaska made no sense to me (regardless of the fact I'd been born there), but then, there's no accounting for human whim.

Finally, I send them both to their rooms, and after lunch, call the X-Team: Polaris, Sabretooth and Beast. Polaris -- Ororo Munroe -- is field leader; we have a . . . complicated relationship. When younger, we dated and broke up, dated and broke up more times than I care to count, and if we've had our moments of fire, we make a lousy long-term couple. Too much competition or not enough common ground, I'm not sure. About six years ago, we finally gave up trying and I moved permanently to Washington. We're better as colleagues, and she's never questioned my right to be Xavier's XO off the field, just as I no longer fight her to be called an X-Man on it.

"Scott," she says now as she enters, her green hair a rich beacon, but she's cold like metal to me. She takes her usual place near the window and builds castles from paper clips. I don't know if she's just nervous, or trying to annoy me.

Logan and Hank enter after her, Logan sniffing. "That damn cat's back." Thutmose hisses at him from a corner of Xavier's big oak desk and Logan snarls in reply. The cat flees to hide under my chair.

Hank frowns sideways at Sabretooth, saying, "I'm glad you're here, Scott."

From my place behind the desk, I incline my head in acknowledgment, then raise a pad on which I've written: _Thoughts on why Erik is interested in these two kids?_

"Why don't you ask your girlfriend?" Logan snarls as he lowers himself into a reinforced chair and shakes back his mane of grizzled hair.

"Sabretooth!" Hank says, and even Ro cuts in with, "Scott's loyalties are not on trial, Logan." I'm mildly surprised. She has no reason to trust my liaison with Jean and what I shared with her only complicates the situation. Her support means a lot.

_It's a fair question_, I write, to placate Logan. _And no, I haven't talked to Jean Grey since the senate hearings. I have my side, and she has hers._

Logan's lip curls. "Would you just _talk_, dammit?" Neither he -- nor Ro -- have ever had much patience with my insecurities.

"Fine," I say aloud and notice all of them wince, which means I'm yelling. I lower the volume to ask, "Why does Lehnsherr want these kids?"

"We have no idea, beyond the obvious," Ro replies. "The boy would be valuable, and was cage fighting -- not precisely legal, especially for someone underage. Maybe Lucifer thought he would be an easy convert?"

Elbows on the desktop, I steeple my hands and press my mouth to them, thinking. "But the boy manifested years ago; wouldn't Lucifer have gone after him then? What if it's not the boy he wants?"

"Why would he want the _girl_?" Logan asks -- an obvious question. "Maybe he just didn't know about 'em before they showed up in Canada?"

"He has Cerebra."

"So? He ain't Xavier. You think he could pick up a mutant kid on the other side of the globe?"

It's a valid point and I glance at Hank, who simply shrugs. "So we're in the dark?" I ask.

"We don't even have a flashlight," Ro agrees.

"I wonder if this might be connected to the upcoming summit?" Hank says.

I nod. "It might." That it could involve the UN summit on mutancy is exactly what I'm afraid of, and frustrated, I rub at my forehead, thinking, _Bluebell, where the hell are you and what's the Brotherhood up to?_

  


***

  
The only advantage, so far as I'm concerned, to impersonating a guy is that I get to piss standing up. Otherwise, I'd rather be a woman any day of the week. Unfortunately, I've been male now for two weeks almost continually, with only the occasional snatched period for relaxation. I can't hold a form more than about seventy-two hours without taking an hour or two as myself, but it's so very, very dangerous in this assignment. The smallest slip up and I'd be caught. I don't even dare write Scott, in case the email were traced from my borrowed computer. I toyed with the idea of using a cybercafe, but discarded it. Better to stay hidden; a letter to Scott isn't necessary communication and I told him not to worry -- and if I'm honest, I want to write to him more for me than for him. Yet everything -- _everything_ -- rides on this. It's for our people; I keep that in mind as I go through another day as someone I'm not. I'm the only one who can do this. But the day finally comes when the pieces are all in place and we're ready. Dominic has weaseled his way onto our chartered chopper as pilot, and together, Senator Robert Kelly and I cross the landing field from his limousine. "Henry," he says, handing me his briefcase to climb aboard. I smile. _Come into my parlor says the Spider to the Fly._ I follow him up the steps and through the hatch.

Inside, we settle into our seats. Kelly pours himself a scotch and sips it while he talks on the phone to the president. I listen as I pretend to work on something else. The call is obviously not going the way Kelly wants and I hide a smile. When he hangs up, I can't resist rubbing it in. "Well, what was his opinion?"

"He's the president of the United States. He doesn't have an opinion. He smiles, he waves, he shakes hands."

"Isn't that what you do, sir?"

His glare is scathing; I don't care. It will soon be over, this charade. "Well, this time it's not up to him. It's up to me, and Congress."

"What of the UN summit? Have you considered staging a demonstration? The whole world will be watching."

He continues to glare. "I don't care about the world. I'm only interested in Americans. The 'world' can't vote for me in the next election, can it? Let Germany and Britain and Italy deal with mutants any damn way they please." He sips more scotch. He poured me some, but mine remains untasted. "You know," Kelly says, "this mutant problem is exactly the kind the liberals beg us to ignore until it blows up in their pansy-ass faces, then guys like me are left to clean up the mess. I'd like to see Summers and his ilk put away. Permanently."

My jaw grinds. For the past two weeks at every opportunity, he's run Scott down and I am so _sick_ of it. Now, he turns his head to look out the window again, sipping the scotch. "This situation -- these mutants -- it's the reason people like me exist, Gyrich."

Quite suddenly, something seems to register with him, and he frowns -- concerned, but not yet scared. "Where the hell are we?" He looks at me in question.

And I smile again . . . for the last time in this form I've come to hate so.

And I change. Right before his eyes, I change. Such a _relief_. Every cell of my body is exhausted from holding another form so different from mine with little rest for two weeks. "It's people like _you_," I say in my real voice, "who made me afraid to go to school as a child."

I watch horror cloud his eyes -- an expression I know so well. Fear, disgust, hatred. I'm the monster who escaped my closet and won' t stay decently hidden. He moves abruptly, lunging for the cockpit. (Where the hell does he think he's going?) He barely escapes his seat before I lift a foot, kicking a heel into his chest to shove him back, then use the foot edge to knock him into unconsciousness. "Take that, you son of a bitch," I mutter when he's out cold.

Rising, I go join Dominic at the chopper controls. "That was easy," he says, conversationally.

I fit on the earphones. "One guinea pig on the way to Erik."

"Think anyone'll miss him immediately?" Dominic asks.

"Not even his wife," I reply.

"I missed _you_," he says after a moment. I choose to ignore it. He's not Scott.

Erik and Raven meet us when we set down and Erik gives her charge of the unconscious Kelly. "See to it that he's transported to the machine." And she disappears in a puff of sulfuric smoke, Kelly in her grip. Erik studies my face. "Go relax, Jean. You've earned it. Kelly will be unconscious for a while. Meet back at the machine in five hours. We'll debrief later."

Nodding, I hurry off, escaping any inquiries he might have and any unwanted solicitation from Dominic. For the first time in two weeks, I can walk as myself, and back in my room, I grab sweat clothes to throw on. It's always cold here. But before I sleep, I open my cell phone and -- against my better judgment -- dial a memorized number. It's not his. It's an answering service we took out some while back for both of us to use, leaving messages for the other. He gets mine in TDD, but I get to hear his voice this way.

"Where are you?" is recorded several times. "Jean, contact me as soon as you can. I'm worried." I listen to the messages three times, my fingers soft on the earpiece, before erasing them. Then I record my own: "I'm fine. I told you not to worry. I'll talk to you soon." Then I fall onto my bed and sleep. I'm so tired -- and so glad to be home -- that I fail to notice Dominic has followed me back to my room and now stands guard outside it.  


  


***

My vibrate alarm catapults me awake, and a quick glance at the clock tells me it isn't morning yet -- which means someone else triggered it. Grabbing my robe, I barrel out of my usual mansion room into the hallway, looking around frantically for the emergency. Thutmose follows me. A small crowd has gathered further down the hall in front of Logan's bedroom door and I trot down to join them, pushing my way through kids, the cat on my heels. But (of course) I'm the last to arrive; Ororo and Hank already have the crisis well in hand. I'm not even sure what's happened, except that Logan is lying unconscious on the floor and the new girl, the little Russian kid, is eeling her way out as I make my way in. The other students give her a wide berth, though her brother follows her. I lean out to see in what direction they head, but need more information before I do anything about it.

Ro and Hank are busy with the incapacitated Logan, but one of the older students, Bobby Drake, is standing there along with his girlfriend Marie. I pull them both aside and make, "What happened?" clear enough with brief gestures.

I can tell from body language that Bobby speaks softly to keep what he says from other students, though surely they must have seen. "I'm not really sure," he tells me. "We heard some yelling, and when we got here, that new girl had hold of Mr. Logan's face and the veins were sticking out in his neck and temples --"

"-- and she was all scratched up!" Marie adds. My eyes flash to her mouth. "Her face was all torn up, and her chest. Blood everywhere. But then . . . she healed. Like he does."

"She must have taken it out of him," Bobby concludes. "Her gloves were off and she was touching his face, so she could take his power. Then she . . . ran off." He gestures out the door, clearly troubled.

What I want to know is what the hell the kid had been doing in Logan's room in the _first_ place? Not that I suspect anything inappropriate from him; he regards the kids like cubs in a pride and protects them accordingly, but it was still odd. Bobby and Marie are clearly shook up by what they've witnessed and a little scared of the girl, and it's never good when the kids get scared of each other. I've seen it before. Speaking aloud from necessity, I point out, "Well, borrowing his power meant she isn't dead -- which she might have been otherwise." People badly mauled by Sabretooth didn't usually survive to tell about it.

Bobby and Marie glance at each other, then he nods. "Yeah, there is that."

"Go back to bed," I tell them. "Take the kids with you. Talk to them if they need it."

They both move to herd lingering students away from the door and out into the hallway. Hank has already left with Logan; he's the only one strong enough to pick up the big man. It's just me and Ro left in the room, and Thutmose; I shut the door. There's blood all over the carpet. _Fill me in?_ With Ro, I use what's called PSE, or pidgin sign English. Real ASL, American Sign Language, is a _language_ with a unique grammar, and like any language, one has to spend time with it to use it well. I'm the only deaf person Ro knows, and while she, Warren, and Hank have all made an effort to learn signing, I don't live in Westchester anymore and they don't use it enough to be proficient. Only Jean (and Xavier) have learned true ASL, and only after three years of near-constant practice has Jean become fluent. Even so, when she translated my senate speech, I had to help her prepare it in advance.

Now, Ro makes a helpless gesture with her hands. "I am not sure I know. I heard shouting from Logan's room and ran down here -- along with everyone else, as you saw. I buzzed you. The new girl, Ilyana, was kneeling by Logan's bed, torn by his claws. She had him by the face, but he was gripping her, too, as if he did not want her to get away. He looked horrified, Scott. Whatever happened, he did not mean to hurt her." And it's interesting that the students had seen Ilyana hurting Logan, while Ro had seen Logan hurting Ilyana. The only ones likely to know what had actually occurred were either unconscious or AWOL.

"She absorbed his power enough to heal," Ro continues. "Her brother had arrived by that point and I was afraid he would attack Logan, though Logan was unconscious. But she said something to him and they left together."

I rub my forehead, then sign, _Logan will probably be okay. I'm going to try to catch those kids._

"They may have gone back to bed."

"I doubt it," I say aloud. She follows me out. _Go check on Logan_, I sign and she nods, heading down the hall to the elevator as I drop off the cat in my room, then turn in the direction I saw the siblings flee earlier -- towards the back stairs. I wish I had Xavier's telepathy to help me find them, or at least had heavier clothes. The April night's chilly, and the kids aren't in any of the obvious places, so in desperation, I use my voice, calling out, "Piotr! Ilyana!" There's no reply. Frustrated, I return to the mansion and check their rooms. They're not there, either. They could be anywhere; this is a big place. Annoyed at my own helplessness, I walk hallways. The other kids all seem to be back in bed, or at least back in their rooms. Power crises aren't so uncommon, though it doesn't usually involve an adult. Finally, I descend to the sub-basement. I've never been all that fond of the place; it seems too sterile and futuristic. Or maybe I've just spent too much time in dusty nineteenth-century museums.

Entering the medbay, I find Logan awake, if groggy. He's talking to Ro and Hank, and I pull over a third chair, watching their mouths to pick up on what I've missed. All of them adjust a little so I can see their faces. They know the routine.

It turns out that the new girl has a bit of a _crush_ on Sabretooth, which baffles me but she wouldn't be the first -- some 'tame the animal' appeal, I suppose, and he did save her from Wolverine. In any case, she'd heard him crying out in the night and her infatuation led her to do what the rest of us (who've been here any length of time) know better than to try -- she woke him from a nightmare. Startled and still in the grip of his private horror, he clawed the hell out of her, so she absorbed his healing factor in order to survive. It worked, but it seems that when she touches someone, she gets their thoughts and memories as well as their powers. I can't imagine what a fourteen-year-old girl is feeling with the memories of Sabretooth.

"I can't find them," I report when they all turn to look at me. "I've checked the obvious places, but no luck."

"Shit," Logan says, pushing back grizzled hair from his face. With his black eyes, claws, and fangs, not to mention the sheer size of him, he looks dangerous -- which he cultivates -- but if I can't say he's all bark and no bite, he's far gentler than he seems. "That poor kid's gotta be freaked. I could track her --"

"No," Ororo says, ever practical. "You are still too weak. We shall wait until morning; they cannot have gone far and it will be daylight soon."

  


***

Erik built Cerebra -- his own version of the professor's Cerebro -- years ago, but the Mutant Registration Act spurred him on to create a specially modified version that Dominic has taken to calling "that damn machine" because everything on Genosha revolves around it these days. Mini-Cerebra doesn't reach far, but it wasn't designed to. Erik's powers aren't the same as Xavier's, and this machine, while matching Cerebra in principle, is designed to boost _both_ his telepathy _and_ his telekinesis. But he didn't build it to push around bigger objects. Moving big things, Erik says, is easy compared to the manipulation of _tin_y objects -- microscopic objects. Like DNA strands. And he couldn't do it without mini-Cerebra. Using himself as a power source, the new machine can manipulate the basic building blocks of the human genome.

It can _make_ mutants.

He's already run a few trials on animals, all successful, so today, we're going to implement his theory on the first flatscan.

Raven had teleported the unconscious Kelly from the helicopter down to the chamber, strapping him in a chair directly in front of the doors to mini-Cerebra. Erik could have gone forward with his test while Kelly was asleep, but that defeated the point. We wanted Kelly to know what was coming -- just as we stared down the barrel of his registration bill, knowing what it would mean for us. Tit for tat, senator.

So I'd had my nap, and now, when I wake and emerge from my bedroom, I find Dominic standing there. "Hey," I say. "What's up?"

"Just waiting on you." He gives his patented 'Aren't I charming?' smile. Like his code-namesake, he flirts with anything of the opposite sex (if no Ganymedes). "Ready to see what that damn machine will do?"

"Wouldn't miss it." So we head down into the bowels of Genosha, Erik's island fortress. It used to be an oil refinery, abandoned some decades back and fallen into disrepair until Erik bought and converted it, made it his headquarters and housed Cerebra here. It's rather ugly -- functional, not decorative, and perpetually cold in winter or sweltering in summer, but that doesn't seem to trouble him. I spend as little time here as possible; I have a home in the city with _climate control_. I like my creature comforts.

The test chamber is especially gloomy, the bare rock still showing in places. The real Cerebra is still one level beneath us, but the smaller, specialized, mobile version is here, set up on one side of the circular arena. At the room's center is a simple armchair where Kelly has been deposited and bound. When Dominic and I enter, the man is already awake and asking Erik a series of rapid-fire questions. Mostly, Erik ignores Kelly, though he speaks now and then in that glorious voice of his, telling the man to have patience. "I assure you, senator, you're not in danger of your life. Nor am I interested in ransom."

Kelly glances over when Dominic and I enter, and his face contorts upon seeing me. Leaving Dominic at the arena's rear, I saunter forward to kneel beside the chair, my hands grasping it like a lover. "Hello, Bob," I purr.

He's pulled as far away from me as the chair will allow. "Get away from me, you freak."

"How rude of you, senator. I am, after all, registered to vote. Weren't you just telling me how _concerned_ you are to court voters?"

"Not voters like you."

I laugh. I suppose his words could wound me, and on one level they do, but mostly, they just fuel my anger, and my belief that people like him need to be taught a lesson.

"Mystique," Erik says to me, "quit playing with your food," and he gestures for me to rise.

I obey, glancing down into Kelly's appalled face. "A joke, senator," I tell him. "I eat the same things you do -- as you've seen for the last two weeks."

Abruptly, Raven teleports into our midst and it causes Kelly to lose his composure completely, screaming in horror -- either at her unorthodox arrival or her physical appearance, I'm not sure which. Probably both. If Raven had pupils to roll, I'm sure she'd have been rolling them. "Why are we wasting our time on this piece of flotsam?" she mutters to Erik.

He ignores that. "We're ready," he says, then adds softly, "Remember when I'm done, I probably won't be able to stand without assistance."

"We know," she says.

"What about Wolverine?" I ask.

"What about him?" Raven snaps as Erik replies, "He's on a mission." That Creed also isn't part of our small family is something we all know but don't say, and I wonder if Erik sent him away on purpose at the moment of our fruition.

Raven touches Erik's cheek, and turning on my heel, I leave them. She's stood at his side ever since Charles Xavier cast him out, and I won't attempt to take her place now, so I go stand with Dominic. He grins, moving closer to me, and I know what he thinks -- he's going to marry Clytemnestra and inherit Mycenae. Dream on, Agamemnon. I am not Tyndarus' child, and my heart belongs to a deaf Uriel, Archangel of Salvation, but also master of Tartarus who guards the gate to Eden with a fiery sword. How fitting, that he should fall for the dark daughter of Lucifer.

Now, Erik speaks to Kelly. "Are you a God-fearing man, senator?"

Kelly is eying Raven and I know he thinks he's fallen in with the devil. Lucifer's Lilith lashes her spade-shaped tail, wrapping it around Kelly's bound wrist, and he recoils from her just as he did from me. Erik is still speaking, "'God-fearing' is such a strange phrase, wouldn't you agree? I've always thought of God as a teacher, a bringer of light, wisdom, understanding." Erik moves to stand over Kelly, who is pressed all the way back in his chair. "You see, what I think you _really_ fear is us. My kind, the brotherhood of mutants." With a hand, he gestures to include the rest of us.

Abruptly, he turns away and approaches the doors to mini-Cerebra. "Fearing mutants is logical, I suppose. As an old _friend_ has told me often enough, humans have always feared what they don't understand. And have made laws they think will protect them -- like your bill, senator."

Kelly suddenly finds his voice, "The intention of the Mutant Registration Act --"

Erik holds up a hand imperiously. "Senator, please. You and I both know what the road to hell is paved with, don't we? We aren't talking about intentions. We're talking about human _fear_. It's only a matter of time before mutants are herded into camps, studied for weaknesses, experimented on, and eventually _cleansed_. Wiped off the face of the Earth. I should know." He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt to show Kelly the tattoo in his skin. Ugly, ugly. A number the Nazis put there. "I've seen it happen in my lifetime."

To his credit, Kelly keeps his mouth shut.

"But I am not like them," Erik says. "I don't intend to kill you; I intend to help you _understand_. Don't fear God, senator. And most certainly don't fear me. At least, not anymore." And with those words, he enters mini-Cerebra.

Unlike the real Cerebra below us, this one has transparent walls, and I'm not sure if that's for Erik to see how far his effect has reached, or if it's mere vanity. I may admire my teacher, but I've never been blind to his faults, even if Scott says I am. (I find it ironic when _Scott_ tells _me_ that I trust too much.)

Inside, Erik seats himself at the controls and places the helmet on his head, then leans back to close his eyes. Slowly, gradually, the chamber begins to pulse with red light, rising up behind him like two great wings, embracing him. Then they extend and tremble, and we're all bathed in such a brightness, it's hard to see.

He is Lucifer, Angel of Light. Erik took that name years ago in defiance of St. Jerome and Western mythology. The Morning Star, the glory of heaven, Lucifer stands for sanctuary, knowledge, understanding -- all things Erik prizes so. And when his full power grips him, he's beautiful and terrible, like a raptor plunging. Like an angel. All of us but Kelly have raised our hands to shield our eyes and Kelly's turned his face away. We can't look on his full glory.

The red wings ripple slowly outward, inches at a time, until they cover the chamber floor, walls, ceiling. They caress Raven and she gasps, holds out her arms like one baptized. Kelly is next, but his reaction is different. He screams in agony. It's a terrible sound, and I wince. Erik told me this wouldn't hurt. "They'll feel odd, perhaps. But it won't be pain." Yet Kelly's scream doesn't sound like fear; I know the difference between frightened and hurt, and this is hurt. Unconsciously, I grip Dominic's arm. Chest puffed out, he slips an arm around me, but before I can disengage, the red wings have reached us both.

The sensation is similar to being brushed by a bramble, scratchy and not entirely pleasant, but not painful. Kelly is still screaming. Then abruptly the effect reverses and the fiery wings diminish until they disappear back into Erik. After their brightness, the room seems dark indeed. Raven goes to the machine while Dominic and I blink to regain our vision. Kelly's head is sagging and he makes little moaning noises but otherwise appears conscious. When Erik emerges from mini-Cerebra, he can barely stand even with Raven's support. He looks terrible as he approaches Kelly.

"What have you done to me?" Kelly asks, his voice raw.

"Welcome to the future -- brother," Erik replies, setting a hand on Kelly's shoulder as he and Raven move past him. He gestures to Dominic, who goes to the chair. He'll take Kelly to a cell.

I approach, too, and reaching out, cup Erik's cheek. "Look at what this did to you, just inside this room. You can't plan to use this on the whole of Ellis Island. Your heart can't take the strain."

Smiling gently, he covers my hand with his. "Don't worry, child. I have no intention of sacrificing myself. Our work is just beginning."

"You need to rest," Raven tells him, shooting me a displeased look. "Let me take care of him, Jean."

"Yes, ma'am."

They teleport away, leaving me standing there in the chamber, frustrated. Dominic is leaving with the bound Kelly and turning on my heel, I stalk to the machine, shoving the door open to enter. This is the first time I've actually been inside it, and I pick up the helmet, speaking to it. "You'd better not take him from us."

It's only then that I notice this helm -- unlike the other -- has a chin strap. Unsettled, I drop my eyes to the chair, which I find has bindings. I glance at the control board. There aren't many dials on it as the machine is controlled by Erik's _mind_, yet this one has a switch Cerebra doesn't. "Locked," the switch reads.

I touch it, fearfully. "Erik, you weren't lying to me -- were you?" I could have sworn he wasn't lying, and it's my business to read body language that way. But if he wasn't lying, why put in these restraints to keep him from interfering once the machine had started?

"I don't understand," I tell the empty room.

  


***

It wasn't so many hours between our night crisis and morning, so I'd gone back to my room to feed the cat, shower and dress in warmer clothes, then head out with Ro to search the grounds again for our missing kids. We came up empty-handed even as the sun was rising. _This isn't good,_ I sign to her, back in the mansion foyer as the other students are heading reluctantly to breakfast before classes. _What makes you think they _wouldn't_ have left the grounds?_

"Scott, where would they have gone? And how? All the cars are still in the garage."

_They crossed Siberia and got as far as Alaska without a car, Ro!_

She looks far more troubled in the dawn light than she did in the medbay, her fine lips pursed and her green hair in disarray from the wind. Finally she gives a little shake of her head. "Okay. I will ask Sabretooth to track them."

I just nod. Twenty minutes later, Sabretooth is dressed and stalking into the foyer. His long mane lifts in the wind of his passage and I almost expect him to growl at me. "_You're_ coming with me?"

"Ororo and Hank have classes to teach," I say aloud. "And can you talk to the kids if you find them? Convince them to come back?"

He glowers at that and shrugs with one shoulder. "Fine," he says at last. "But you better keep up, cub."

My jaw tightens. "I'm not _delicate_, Sabretooth, just deaf. I can take care of myself."

He snorts and stalks out the front door. "I already tracked 'em from the room. They ran upstairs first, looks like, then went back to their rooms a little later, then downstairs right out the front door -- probably sometime this morning when you was out lookin' for 'em." He glances back at me as I follow. He has a ground-eating stride. "They coulda walked right behind you and you wouldn't'a known it."

It's a blunt statement not meant to spare my feelings, but not accusatory, either. It's been Logan even more than Ororo who's blocked my joining the X-team. 'There's just some things a deaf man can't do, Scott,' he'd say. 'That ain't pity or meanness. It's honesty, eh?' And a small, frustrated part of me knows he's right. But I do have my uses -- like now. I'm the only one who can converse with these kids.

We walk. And walk. It's clear they're running again. They probably assume they've worn out their welcome, and their path is generally south-southeast, headed towards New York itself. I hope we can catch them before they hit more urban areas in southern Westchester that might interfere with Sabretooth's ability to track . . . not to mention places we'd draw notice -- or where he would, at least. Like Jean, Sabretooth is an obvious mutant.

We cross a few roads, follow others, and traverse a few parking lots, even a cow pasture. We make good time -- probably better time than the kids did. I walk a lot, preferring my feet or the Metro to a car. (I can drive, I just don't like doing so in Washington.) So it's not hard for me to keep up with Logan, and I think he's impressed, even if he won't say so. Their trail finally turns due south along Highway 133 towards New Castle. There's a train station in New Castle, and if they catch a train, we'll lose them. It's late mid-morning already, and I'm getting tired and hungry -- not to mention hot. I've already doffed my jacket. It's tied around my waist.

Logan stops abruptly, one arm thrown out to block my movement forward. "Wolverine!" he mouths so I can see.

"What?" I mouth back, startled. A car passes us on the highway, whipping our hair and clothes. Wolverine can track the same as Sabretooth, of course, but how on earth could he have known the kids were on the run to intercept them?

"His scent is all over the place," Logan mouths again and gestures for me to stay put. I'm not going to argue with that. Meeting six blades from behind isn't my idea of fun. Sabretooth rips through the roadside wire fence and disappears into the bush beyond. For such a big guy, he can move with remarkable silence.

Five minutes later, he's back, and doesn't even pause to explain, just grabs my forearm and drags me into the woods. Piotr is about ten feet inside, propped against a tree trunk, barely conscious. There are three nasty puncture wounds low in his right shoulder; I hope they haven't hit his lung, and the girl is nowhere to be seen. "He took her!" the boy says in Russian as I approach. "He took Ilyana!"

Kneeling in front of him, I look up at Logan. "Wolverine has Ilyana."

"Damn," he replies, and pulls out his cell phone to call Ororo. "Ain't no way that kid's walkin' back."

I return my attention to Piotr. "_Chto sluchilos?_" I ask him in Russian, aloud. _What happened?_

"_Ti mozhjesh govorit!_" he gasps, surprised. _You can talk!_

"I can," I reply, still in Russian. "I don't like to, especially outside English. It's hard for me to make the words sound right." And whatever I just said must have proved my point, because he's frowning, puzzling through my butchered verbal Russian.

When it comes to English, my deafness is post-verbal and I have a certain advantage. I know _how_ to make the sounds, even if I don't practice much and can no longer hear myself. I still have the _memory_. Yet when it comes to other languages, and no matter how quickly I learn vocabulary and grammar, I'm a _preverbal_ deaf speaker. I don't know how they _sound_ -- which is very important for a language like Russian with its hard and soft sounds and consonantal groupings that don't exist in English.

In any case, he must have understood enough, because he proceeds to tell his story, which I translate (aloud) for Sabretooth while we wait for someone to arrive from the mansion. There isn't much to tell. The kids ran for exactly the reason we assumed they had -- fear of what would happen to them, as well as fear of hurting anyone else accidentally. As for the attack, Piotr couldn't tell us more than that they'd been walking along the highway, headed south, when Wolverine had suddenly appeared in front of them out of the roadside bushes. Piotr had panicked, transforming into steel and grabbing his sister to run across the road straight into the brush on the other side. Wolverine had followed, and between protecting his sister and his own inexperience, Piotr had been overpowered within minutes, Wolverine's adamantium claws stabbing right through his steel form. When Piotr had collapsed, Wolverine had grabbed the girl and made a break for it. Piotr had tried to follow, but hadn't been able to keep from phasing in and out of human form, and had soon passed out from simple blood loss -- where Logan and I had found him. He had no idea how Wolverine had known they weren't at the mansion, or where to find them.

"Creed musta been lurking around the school, waitin' for a chance," Logan says now, and I nod. Yet the fact he'd taken the girl, not the boy, underscored my earlier hunch. This wasn't simple recruiting.

"Why does he want Ilyana?" Piotr asks me now, plaintively, echoing my own thoughts.

"I don't know," I tell him. "I wish I did. But we're going to get her back."

Fifteen minutes later, Ororo picks us up, and as soon as we've returned to the mansion -- Hank working on Piotr -- I send a message to the professor, letting him know what's happened. Then I check the answering service I share with Jean, hoping for word. Miraculously, there's a message, and while I'm relieved to hear from her, it also means she's back where I can contact her. Opening my laptop, I send her email, telling her to message me by phone, and forty-five minutes later, my phone vibrates. The boy Piotr is out of danger and resting now, and I've gone up to the professor's office. Alone, I open the phone and enter, _I've never asked you about Brotherhood business before, but Wolverine just abducted one of our students. What the hell is going on, Bluebell?_

There's a pause, then she types back, _What are you talking about?_

_Long story. In brief, two of our kids ran this morning -- normal first-week jitters after a power accident. We went after them, but Wolverine intercepted them first on Highway 133, stuck his claws right through the boy's shoulder and left him bleeding, then took off with the boy's sister. This isn't the first time he's chased them, either. Sabretooth and Polaris rescued them from him in Alaska a few days ago. Whatever disagreements between your people and mine, LEAVE THE KIDS OUT OF IT!_ I didn't realize how mad I am until I type that last sentence.

Another brief pause, then she replies, _Cypher, I don't know anything about this. You have to believe me. We don't make war on kids -- certainly not mutant kids. You _know_ that. Lucifer would never sanction such a thing. Wolverine must be acting on his own._

And I feel better, because I believe her. Jean and I have a policy of honest truth or plain refusal to answer. If she's telling me this, she's not lying. _Can you find out what's going on?_

_I'll try. Lucifer won't be happy to know Wolverine's attacking children in his off hours. I'll contact you as soon as I know something._

And she ends the call. I don't doubt her for a moment. That's why I'm so shocked when, ten minutes later as I tell Logan and Ororo the news in Xavier's office, I receive twin disgusted looks. "You ass!" Logan bellows, before Ro shushes him.

"Scott -- when we ran into Wolverine in Canada, he _said_ Lucifer wanted the kids."

"What? But Jean --"

"She lied to you."

"No!" I protest.

"It's what she _does_, bub," Logan tells me, but despite his words, his voice isn't cruel. It's almost gentle. "It's who she is. Lies are her business."

"Not with me. She's never lied to me."

"Can you be sure of that?" Ororo asks.

Rising from the professor's desk, I stalk out of the room and then from the mansion altogether -- go out onto the front lawn and turn my face up to the sun, eyes closed. I don't know what to think anymore.  


* * *

  
Feedback is always welcome.  
  



	4. How the Leopard Changed Her Spots II

**HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED HER SPOTS  
Part II  
****Minisinoo**

Standing in my room -- the only place I have any privacy -- I hang up the phone, absolutely certain that I've just told Scott the truth. I hate Wolverine and view this as an excellent opportunity to talk Erik into finally getting rid of the animal. Tucking my phone in a voluminous pocket on my cargo pants, I head out to find Lucifer. Around Genosha, I keep my natural form and wear clothes -- like anyone else. Dominic's room is across from mine and his door is open. He glances up as I practically explode from my doorway. "What's up?" he calls.

I don't really want to talk to Dominic, but I'm mad enough to spill the beans in my rage. "I just got word that Creed is attacking children!"

Dominic blinks. "Huh?"

"A young girl. He attacked a pair of mutant siblings and ran off with the girl! What's he going to do next?"

"Oh! He got the little bitch finally!"

I'm stunned. For three breaths, I just stand there and stare. Then caution takes over -- that sly skill that's served me so well. "Ah -- I didn't realize he was under orders. You know how he is."

Thankfully, Dominic is too dim to ask how I got word in the first place. "Oh, yeah. While you were playing Kelly's aide, Creed was sent up to Canada to fetch this kid. The X-Farts interfered. He's been watching their mansion, hoping for another chance. I guess he finally got her."

I keep my face carefully blank, but inside, I struggle with the news. That's why Wolverine wasn't present for Kelly's transformation. It hadn't had anything to do with Erik excluding him on purpose. If anything, I was the one excluded. Why hadn't they told me about this? It wasn't like Erik to keep key Brotherhood missions from me, even if they didn't involve me -- especially not when _Dominic_ knew! "What do we want her for? Is she joining us? It'd be nice to have another girl around."

Dominic leans back on his bed, hands behind his head so that I have a good view of biceps and pecs flexing under his tight little shirt. "She won't be around long, I'm afraid."

"Why?"

"Her power sucks the life out of you -- and takes your powers with it. Erik figures he can give her enough of his to run that damn machine."

And it all clicks together in my head, making horrible sense -- yet before I can respond in any way, Raven teleports right into the room. She seems startled to see me there. "Dominic! Jean?" Then her attention snaps back to business. "Kelly escaped."

"How? Wasn't he locked in a cell?"

"It seems his new mutation lets him become as supple as a jellyfish. How appropriate for a politician. He slipped right through the cage bars and fell into the water before we could catch him." It's clear she's furious.

"What're we supposed to do?" Dominic asks. He doesn't like Raven; she's old, as old as Erik, and he finds her ugly. My form, however inhuman, he'll accept because he thinks it sexy, and I could be any fantasy he desires. Raven is just blue and furry with three fingers on each hand and a tail. And pointed teeth. "I could whip up a storm for you," he goes on, "but it wouldn't catch Mighty Jellyfish Man. And Jean here can do a lot of things, but I've never seen her morph into a shark."

I roll my eyes and turn my attention to Raven. "Shall we go talk to Erik?" My mind is still reeling, but the crisis provides a convenient distraction. I have to know if Erik really sanctioned the taking of that girl -- and I want to know where she is.

Erik is in his office. It's a plain room with a table, a computer, and a window that overlooks the bay. It's always too dim in here for me, but now, it suits my thoughts. "Do you want me to go after Kelly?" I ask as soon as I walk through the door.

He glances up, almost languidly, and speaks with a smile. "No, I don't think that necessary. We've seen that the machine works. If he survives to reach the shore, it can't hurt us. He doesn't know anything critical, and we'll have a new friend in the Senate. I sincerely doubt he'll vote for a bill that will require _him_ to 'expose' himself."

"He might try to pretend he's not a mutant," Dominic says as he enters behind me.

"Then _we'll_ expose _him_, if he does," Raven explains, bamfing in.

I'm watching Erik, because he's watching me too benignly, yet with too much interest. Lucifer no longer trusts me, it's clear -- I'm sleeping with the enemy. Yet I'm the one who feels betrayed.

I wonder if he's probed my mind since I entered. I don't think so, and I've been careful not to project, but he _could_ read me, if I give him cause. "All right," I say now, meekly enough. "Do you want Victor, Dominic and me to begin disassembling the machine for transport?"

"You and Dominic can handle it. Raven will go with you, to supervise."

And to keep watch on me, no doubt. Nothing is said about Wolverine.

It's a tedious process and I have to watch myself to avoid giving away the fact that I know I'm being observed. While we work, I think. First, I need to know if my suspicions are really true, but all the evidence is pointing that way, from Erik's reassurances earlier that he had no intention of sacrificing himself, to the straps on the machine's chair and helmet. Those are meant to restrain an unwilling sacrifice.

I wonder, too, about the efficacy of the whole plan. Moral issues aside, is this girl powerful and skilled enough to take Erik's place? _Lucifer_ can make the necessary changes to human DNA, but can this untrained girl? I'm not a scientist, and don't understand how the machine works. I also don't understand enough about the girl's power . . . and wonder if the others do, either. Was this a fool's enterprise from its inception?

In any case, I need to make sure his plans haven't changed and we're still taking the machine to Liberty Island. It's the only place close enough for the field to reach Ellis Island, but far enough away to have a level of security we can manage with just the five of us. And I'm crucial. I'm the one who'll get them in unnoticed. Raven could teleport in, even teleport the rest of us in one at a time, but she couldn't bring down the security screen long enough to get the _machine_ inside and not trip alarms. They need someone to sit in the security room who won't raise eyebrows. They need me.

But can I do this now? Knowing what I know, can I still do this? It isn't just about changing world leaders into mutants. They haven't asked this girl if she's willing to be a sacrificial lamb. Maybe Erik plans to ask, but what if she says 'no'? And she probably will. They're going to put her in that chair anyway. It has _straps_.   
  


***

  
It's Ororo who comes to fetch me. I'm back in Xavier's office, waiting (hoping) for Jean to contact me again with news -- prove Ro and Logan wrong in their suspicions. But she hasn't, and I'm worried, though the fact that she hasn't feels like a backhanded confirmation of my trust. If she really had been lying, she'd have waited a decent amount of time, then called with something placating. The fact it's been five hours suggests she's honestly trying to find out something. But now Ororo opens the door and motions for me to come; her movements are abrupt and it's clear it's urgent. She's already hurrying down the hallway to the elevator by the time I emerge and catch up to her. A raised eyebrow is enough to elicit a half-laugh. "You'll never believe who's our newest guest in the sub-basement." Then she takes control of the elevator and sends us down at dizzying speed. I grab the walls, hoping my stomach will eventually catch up. When we've reached the sub-basement, the door swishes open and she ushers me towards the medbay.

I stop dead in the doorway. "Senator Kelly?" I say aloud.

He's lying on one of the beds while Hank works over him. He doesn't appear to be wearing anything but the bedsheet and his glance flicks to me. "Summers? What are you doing here?"

I don't want to speak aloud further, and moving into the room, sign, _I sometimes do work for Xavier's Institute. He was my professor at Columbia._ Almost automatically, Hank translates as I pull up a stool and seat myself. Kelly looks bad -- unnaturally pale so that blue veins show under skin that's slick with perspiration -- and Hank's expression is grim. Something is seriously wrong. I sign, _Tell me what happened_, and while I'm sure Kelly doesn't know ASL, the meaning is clear enough. He begins to speak, a haunted expression on his face.

As I listen to his story, I'm not sure what I feel. I've never before heard from one of Jean's _victims_ -- and he is a victim. If I feel little love for the man, I'm chilled by what he's suffered, and wonder what happened to the aide whose place she stole. Is the real Gyrich still alive, or did she just do away with him? I'm not sure I can bear to know.

As for the _Twilight Zone_ experience of his captivity . . . I can't decide if this is perverse poetic justice or a horrible violation -- or both. Kelly is now what he detests most . . . a mutant. _We're not what you think,_ I sign, when he's finished. Hank translates. _Not all of us are like Lucifer . . . or agree with his methods._

"But you are dangerous."

_Some are. And some non-mutants hold up convenience stores at gunpoint. Does that mean I assume you do?_

Kelly ignores that, his face turning apoplectic purple "There has to be some way to reverse this! Lucifer did it; he has to reverse it! It's not fair!"

I resist rolling my eyes. The senator sounds remarkably like he's six instead of forty-six._ None of us asked to be mutants._ I tilt my head and ask -- aloud, "Why are you here?"

"Where else could I go? Not to a hospital, I'd be . . . " he trails off, as if only now realizing what he was going to say.

". . . treated like a mutant?" Hank finishes for him.

"I'm not a real mutant," Kelly says, stubborn in his denial.

"I'll be able to say more about that once I've finished running tests," Hank tells him, then heads off towards the back of the lab where his centrifuge is spinning, already working on the process of producing a DNA sample for sequencing -- Kelly's, no doubt. I follow while Ororo steps in to speak more with Kelly. I notice the boy Piotr is no longer in the main lab. Hank must have put him in a private room.

_What do you think of this twist?_ I sign.

"That Erik Lehnsherr should get this year's Mad Scientist award? Does he really believe that turning Kelly into a mutant will stop that bill?"

_I doubt it._ And I cross my arms, frowning. There's more to this. I just wish I could figure out the 'more,' and I need to talk to Jean again. We're rapidly approaching a place in our relationship where 'Don't ask, don't tell' no longer works. Sneaking into private meetings on Capitol Hill and lifting personal memos is one thing, but impersonating an aide and helping to abduct and abuse a U.S. senator is a hundred times more serious. I don't care what kind of rat the man is, it doesn't justify what they've done.

Hank is speaking again, softly, "There's something seriously wrong with Kelly, Scott. I can't tell what yet, but I've never seen a mutant manifestation like this. Mutants usually can't control their powers immediately, but Kelly's transformation seems worse than usual . . . _unstable_ somehow.

I glance at him in inquiry but he just shrugs. "I can't say more yet." He gestures to the centrifuge. "Wait till I can sequence the sample. It'll take the rest of the day, though. Is the professor headed back soon?"

_Yes. They had a mid-afternoon meeting they didn't want to cancel, but they're probably on the way to the airport now._ I hesitate, add, _I haven't heard back from Jean. Ro and Logan think she was lying to me, but if she was lying, she'd have called by now. She said Wolverine wasn't acting with Erik's approval. Maybe she's telling the truth and _he_ was lying._

"Could be. Or it could be that Lucifer's keeping the truth from her. Did you think of that, Scott?"

_She's like his daughter._

His blue eyes are piercing. "And sometimes fathers try to protect their daughters from the things they do of which they know their children won't approve." He sighs and sits down on a stool, but can't quite look me in the face. "I'm not the skeptic Ro and Logan are, and I don't believe you'd fall for a woman you believed immoral. But Scott, you're playing with fire and we both know it."

My lips thin and I turn away before I say something I'll regret, leaving the medbay. I'm barely back above ground when my phone buzzes against my side. I rip it off and flip it open.

  


***

"I need to make a trial run."

Erik glances up at me. "A trial run?"

"Before tomorrow night," I explain, pretending impatience. "You know I like to insert early when I can -- when it's important. This is too important to screw up, Erik."

He nods. I'm not behaving unexpectedly, so his suspicions aren't triggered. "Very well. Take Dominic with you."

"Huh?"

"Not into Liberty; I mean simply for coming and going. As you say, this is too important to risk. I don't want to risk _you_, my dear."

Meaning he doesn't dare leave me unmonitored. But it doesn't matter if Dominic trails me to and from as long as I have time on Liberty Island alone. "Sure. But we won't be back till after midnight. I need to sit the guy's whole shift."

"Naturally. The machine is already prepared for the transport. We're not pressed for time."

Half an hour later, Dominic and I are headed landward, then make our way to the Queens' apartment of the guard I'm to replace. Dominic has created an unexpected lunchtime downpour so that coats and umbrellas give us extra cover as we slip into the building and up the stairs. A pulse of confined lightning from Zeus' finger to the alarm system fries it and we have no problem entering the guard's apartment. He was the obvious choice -- he lives alone and keeps to himself at work. I morph into his sister, and when I enter, he's sitting at his dining table, eating a sandwich, already dressed for work. "Lottie!" he says, clearly surprised but not suspicious, and that few seconds is all I'd normally need, but before I can cross the room to knock him out, Zeus enters behind me and blasts him. He convulses with muscle contractions and fan-like burn patterns feather even blacker across his dark skin while blood streams out of his ears from burst eardrums. His eyeballs literally steam as does the perspiration on his skin. There's a sweet stink of burnt human flesh and he's very, very dead.

I'm so angry I can barely speak. Spinning on Dominic, I snap, "Could you _possibly_ have been any more dramatic -- or noisy? Idiot! There was no reason to kill him!"

He just shrugs. "It wasn't that loud, and dead men tell no tales. You get ready, I'll take care of this." He gestures to the body and heads into the bathroom to turn on the shower, then comes back for the body, which he strips and drags after him, dumping it in the tub with one arm hanging out, as if reaching for something. Finding a radio, he takes that into the bathroom, too, but failed to check if there's a plug close enough for one to reasonably believe a radio (still plugged in) could have fallen into the shower accidentally.

I'm in my new form by the time he emerges, frustrated. "Hoisted on your own petard?" I ask.

"Shut the fuck up."

"It wouldn't have fooled a coroner anyway."

"I said shut the fuck up!"

"Fine." I rise and head out. Yesterday, I might have been furious at the unnecessary risk. But today? All I care about is that he was kept busy long enough he didn't notice me shift my very real phone from one mutated form's 'purse' into the 'pocket' of another. "Let's go."

We head out together, traveling back to the Liberty Island ferry, though we part company before I reach it. I know he's following me, so I do nothing. I'll be free of him soon.

Once I've reached the island and have checked in for my guard's shift, I head up to the security room where I await my chance at break time, then escape to the relative privacy of an employee exit 'to have a smoke.' Hunkering down in the lee of the mudroom, I pull out my phone. I don't have long, but the first time I try to call, there's no response. "This user is temporarily out of range."

"Dammit!" I mutter, hanging up. I wait five minutes, then call again, and this time, there's an answer in my text box.

_Hello?_

_I don't have time to explain,_ I enter, _but have your X-Team at Liberty Island tomorrow night. They'll find your girl there._

_What did the Brotherhood do to Robert Kelly, Bluebell?_

I blink at the screen and swallow hard. _How did you know about that?_

_He's here. He came here, when he escaped. What did Erik do to him?_

_Changed him at a molecular level. Erik plans to change every person on Ellis Island tomorrow, but he's going to use your girl in place of himself to power his machine. Cypher, I know we don't always agree on how to bring about change, but that child didn't volunteer for this, and if Lucifer's machine won't kill the diplomats, it _will_ kill her. I can't get to her, don't even know where they're holding her. They don't trust me anymore. But if your X-Team makes it to Liberty, maybe they can save her._

_Get out of there. Leave. Come to Westchester. Help us._

_I can't. If I run now, they'll change their plans completely. They don't trust me, but they still need me, so they're keeping me involved and watching me. I won't be able to contact you again. Get your people out here tomorrow night. You've got to trust me._

_I want to._

_Please, Scott._ _I've never lied to you, have I? I haven't always told you the full truth -- but I've _never_ lied. You've got to trust me now._

_All right._ The cursor blinks while he pauses, then adds, _Please be careful. I love you._

_I love you, too. And I'm always careful._ I end the call, close the phone, then fling it into the bay.

  


***

I'm telling Ororo what Jean just told me -- arguing with Ro, actually -- when Logan bursts into Xavier's office. "There's been an accident!"

"What?" Ro is half out of her chair.

"Not here. Warren's plane, with the professor."

My heart kicks hard in my chest and he reads our faces. "They ain't dead," he assures us. "But it is serious. Something happened to an engine during taxi and the whole damn plane spun outta control. It was still on the ground, but it smashed a wing into an embankment and tossed around everybody onboard, even with seatbelts. War's all bruised up, but basically okay. The professor, though, something smacked him in the head -- a tray or whatnot. They took him to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, which is near Montgomery County Airpark."

"But he is all right otherwise?" Ro asks.

"That's what Warren says."

"How remarkably _convenient_." Ro turns to glare at me. "Can you tell me Erik had nothing to do with that?"

I drop my head into my hands and pull at my hair, then look up, signing roughly, _I'm sure he did! It doesn't change anything. We know where they'll be tomorrow. You intercept them. We stop this._

"What's he sayin'?" Logan asks her. 

Her lips are thin, her hands on her hips. The late afternoon light walks across the floor and her high-heel shoes. "He has heard back from Jean Grey."

"Yeah -- and?"

"You have to take the X-Team to Liberty Island tomorrow night," I explain aloud, before Ro can speak. "What Erik did to Kelly? He's planning to do the same to the diplomats on Ellis Island tomorrow." I have the satisfaction of seeing Logan drop his jaw. "But he's planning to use _Ilyana_ instead of himself. Between what Jean said and what Kelly told us earlier, it sounds as if this machine he's built will likely kill the person powering it. So Erik plans to transfer his power to Ilyana and use her instead. If the team can get to Liberty in time, they can stop him."

"Assuming it is not a trap," Polaris says.

Frustrated, I breathe out. "Ro, it's not a trap. It makes too damn much sense. Weird sense, but Brotherhood sense, and we've got proof of this machine in our own sub-basement infirmary."

"Why would Jean tell you all this?" Logan asks, blunt as usual.

"Because she didn't bargain on Erik using a scapegoat. She has limits, dammit. That machine won't kill the diplomats, but it'll kill the girl."

Hank has entered on the tail end of my comment even as Logan shrugs, and it strikes me that Logan may understand this better than Ro, or Hank. Our Sabretooth has done things he regretted but felt necessarily, yet -- like Jean -- he has limits, places his honor won't let him go.

"Actually," Hank says now, "Lucifer's machine _will_ kill any non-mutant it affects."

All of us stare at him and he raises those oversized hands. "I seem to have missed most of the discussion, but I have troubling news. Although still awaiting the full results of the DNA sequencing, my preliminary tests and my observation of Senator Kelly suggests that the changes affected by Erik Lehnsherr's machine are impermanent. And fatal." He slumps into a chair in Xavier's office. "Kelly's very cell structure is breaking down, returning to its molecular components. And I don't think it's related to Kelly's particular mutation." His expression is grave as he studies all of us. "If Kelly survives the night, I shall be surprised."

"Shit," Logan mutters as Ororo rubs her forehead. I wonder if Erik Lehnsherr knows his machine doesn't function right, and if he'd care if he did know? Surely he didn't _intend_ this. What's the use of altering DNA in the world's diplomats if they all die within forty-eight hours?

"So," I say, "now we have two motivations. It's about more than just saving Ilyana."

"I am still unconvinced that Jean Grey isn't setting us up," Ororo tells me. "It is too convenient. Send us to one place to be eliminated, while they make their strike from another locale. The fact that we have some confirmation of their ultimate plan only baits the trap more sweetly."

There's a paranoid logic to what she says, but I shake my head. Interestingly, so does Logan. "That scenario assumes too much," I tell her. "Jean didn't know Kelly came here. She was surprised. And there really aren't many, if any, other places the Brotherhood could put this machine that's close enough to Ellis Island. Now that we know their objective, Liberty really is the logical launching point. Plus -- she's never lied to me, Ro. Never."

"To your knowledge."

"Never," I repeat stubbornly. "We've had a policy of refusing to talk rather than to lie. It's been . . . It's been key -- and more even for her than for me. So much of Jean's job involves deception; when she find someone she trusts, she avoids lying at all."

"I have my doubts --"

"Cub speaks fair," Logan interrupts. "I c'understand. When you do this kinda work, you got lines in the sand, and you don't cross 'em." The two of us hold gazes a moment; I nod faintly in thanks. "She gonna help us?" he asks.

"I don't know," I answer honestly. "She won't stop you. She may help in small ways, if she can. More than that, I can't say. They're watching her. She said she's no longer trusted." My lips thin. "No doubt because of our relationship. But she is needed. I'm not sure how long Erik planned to keep her in the dark about the girl." Or what he planned to say or do when she finally found out. He must have known she wouldn't approve, but he wouldn't kill her, would he?

I think about Charles, in a hospital in Washington. It sobers me. Erik will do whatever he thinks he has to do. "So, the X-Team goes to Liberty tomorrow," I tell them.

"I have not yet agreed," Ororo reminds me.

I meet her eyes. "In the professor's absence, I decide our general course of action, and I say we go after Ilyana. Maybe it is a trap, but it's also the best lead we've got. What else would you have us do, Ro?"

She looks away. "I don't know. But I don't like it." She stands. "Come on, Sabretooth. We've got planning to do."

"Call Warren, cub," Logan tells me on the way out.

"Warren?" Hank asks, and I fill him in about the accident. "Erik wants to be sure that the professor cannot reach Cerebro," Hank says.

_Or he just wants him dead,_ I sign, vicious in my anger.

"Had he wanted him dead, I suspect he would have timed his bomb -- or whatever it was -- to explode once the plane was _in_ the air."

"Maybe," I say, and head out.

  


***

I should've been born in Missouri. I'm a 'show me' kinda gal, and I had to know for sure, had to see for myself, before I turned my coat completely. I had to find this girl. It's not that I doubted Scott. But even after all the evidence, I couldn't quite believe -- didn't want to believe -- that Erik would do this. I still wanted to think Wolverine had acted on his own.

My initial plan, naive though it was, had involved simply walking into the cellblock to look, but I find Wolverine standing guard. "What're you doin' here?" he demands.

Trying on a combination of innocence and irritation, I reply, "I came to see the cell Kelly got out of."

He just snorts and crosses his arms, and I remember his keener-than-human senses. He must _smell_ my nervousness, though he wouldn't necessarily know what was causing it. Unlike Erik, he's not a mind reader. "What are _you_ doing here?" I demand, thinking to go on the offense and distract him.

"None'a your business," he replies.

"What do you mean it's none of my business?" I'm indignant.

He's amused. "Just what I said. Now get lost 'fore I tell Erik you was snooping around."

"Go to hell, Wolverine."

"Already there, kid. Or ain't you thought about who's running this joint?"

Annoyed, and still loyal enough to be insulted on Erik's behalf, I leave. Unfortunately, all I've learned is that Wolverine doesn't want me in the cellblock area. That still doesn't mean Erik's involved, despite Wolverine's threat of telling Erik that I was snooping.

But even Wolverines must eat. So I wait for the changing of the guard. It comes at mid-morning the day of the Ellis Island Summit, and I really should be sleeping in preparation for that evening's excitement, but I have to know. Dominic takes Creed's place guarding the cells. That makes it harder for me to think it's just Wolverine's pet project, but Dominic isn't long on wits. He might believe whatever Wolverine told him.

I don't come as myself this time. I morph into Erik, instead, and I want Dominic to stop me as I approach. I hope to hear his voice stutter out some excuse, proving that they don't want Erik here either, proving that he doesn't know, didn't sanction this . . .

But Zeus just stands a little straighter and tries a half-assed salute. It crushes my last hope, and I hadn't realized, until that moment, just how much stock I'd placed in that hope because I'd built it on what I thought I knew about that man to whom I'd devoted my life. I hadn't _wanted_ to believe that Erik could kill an innocent -- but now, I have no choice. And I feel kicked in the gut.

I also realize that I have no idea what cell the girl is in. Some have an open front, but some don't. I pause, and hope I'm not giving myself away when I ask, "Which cell? I haven't visited her yet."

To my relief, Dominic doesn't question, just hops to my assistance, opening the first cell so I can enter. The girl is inside. She looks up and then presses against the far wall, clearly terrified. So young. "Thank you, Zeus," I say, and shut the door in his face. It's solid. He can't see inside. Turning back to the frightened girl, I smile.

And I change. Her little bow-mouth falls open in surprise and I raise a finger to my lips, almost tip-toeing across the floor to sit beside her. She's pale and very blond with light blue eyes like Scott's. She's also covered almost head to toe in clothing, but still shivers. I don't think it's with cold. Looking at her, my final choice is made. I entered the Brotherhood to protect children like this, build a world for them where they'd be cared for, not feared as I was -- and I haven't fallen so far yet that I can justify killing this one in the hopes that others will be saved. Maybe if I _knew_, if I could see the future like Scott's friend . . . but I can't. I'm not even convinced this plan of theirs will work; she could die for nothing. "How are you?" I whisper.

She blinks and replies with, "_Ya ne ponimaju. Ya ne govor'u po-anglijski._"

Oh, _shit_. This never occurred to me, that she can't understand English, and I wish desperately for Scott, or at least his gift. I don't even know what language she's speaking, though it sounds rough and guttural enough to be German or something Slavic. Pointing to me chest, I whisper, "Jean."

She understands that much and points to her own chest. "Ilyana."

Laying a hand on her shoulder, I ask, "Okay?" and indicate her body. I need to know that Creed hasn't hurt her. She nods that she's okay, then points to the door. She wants to know if she can go out. I sigh and shake my head, reaching out to stroke her hair but she pulls away, looking terrified. "No hurt," I tell her, but she still won't let me touch her, and I remember what Dominic said about her power -- she drains others -- and I realize she's not afraid of me, but _for_ me.

Speaking in English, although I know she can't understand, I say, "It's going to be okay. I'll get you out of here. Or something. But I'd better go before they suspect." I morph back into Erik and she watches, wide-eyed. Then I lay a finger on my lips again, saying "Shhh," and then pinch my lips shut, to show she shouldn't tell anyone I've been there. I hope she gets it. She nods. Smiling, I pat her on her well-covered shoulder.

Then I go out. Dominic is still there and he gives that same, stupid mock-salute again. I just raise an eyebrow and stalk past. It's enormously dangerous for me to pretend to be Erik himself but it was the only way I could know for sure, and all I can do is hope that Dominic and Wolverine have changed places when Erik finally does come.

It's almost time for me to depart for Liberty and I go back upstairs, adopting my borrowed form for the night. Stopping by my room one last time, I glance inside. I doubt I'll be seeing it again, whatever happens, but there's nothing here I really want to save. So I check in with Raven before leaving; she's in Erik's office. I have no idea where Erik is. I hope not in the cells. "It's time," I say. I mean a lot of things.

She barely looks up, waving me out. "See you tonight, Mystique."

"Tonight, Lilith," I reply, and walking out the door to the boat dock, I let my form ripple like a shrug.

I'm Brotherhood no more.   
  


***

  
When the door to my bedroom slams open without so much as a knock -- not that I'd have heard a knock -- I sense the movement and look around. It's Ororo. "Senator Kelly is dead," she says. Rising from where I'd been bent over Thutmose's food bowl, I nod, lips thin. Feeding the cat seems like such a horribly mundane thing to have been doing while another man died, but that's mortality for you. The sun rises and sets, people (and animals) eat and shit and copulate. Some die. Life goes on, brutal and blunt and wonderful in its simplicity. Ro tells me what Kelly said in his final moments. She'd been on medbay duty. Sick as Kelly was, I hadn't wanted him left alone. Partly, my decision had stemmed from kindness; whatever he'd been and done in life, no one deserves to die alone. But I'd learned a thing or two from Jean about paranoia, as well, and if he were desperate enough, and hated us enough -- and was alone long enough -- he might get into some kind of mischief before the end. So one of the adults had stayed in the medbay at all times. Ro says he suddenly called out, "Is somebody there?" "I'm here," she'd told him, approaching. Apparently he was already blind by that point. I can't imagine being blind, even in my final moments. Perhaps it's the bias of a deaf man, but not _seeing_ must be terrifying.

"Please don't leave me," he'd said. "I don't want to be alone."

"I won't leave you," she'd replied, gripping his hand.

"Do you hate normal people?" he'd asked.

"Sometimes."

"Why?"

"I suppose . . . I am afraid of them."

"Well, I think you've got one less person to be afraid of."

And then, she says, he simply disintegrated right before her eyes, his whole body collapsing into its component parts -- of which the bulk was water. No dust-to-dust here; we'll clean up Kelly with a mop. She ran immediately to report.

Now, I glance at my clock; it's late morning, and I've been counting the hours -- not towards Kelly's death, but towards tonight's rendezvous. One I can't attend. So much rides on this mission and I have to wait in the mansion with the kids, and keep my fingers crossed. It's not that I don't trust Ro -- I do, implicitly -- but I hate feeling useless. Is this what the professor feels every time the team goes out? It's probably a good thing I moved to Washington. I wonder where Jean is, if she's safe. "We've got to stop this," I say aloud.

"Yes," Ro replies simply.  
  


***

  
They're right on time, Lilith, Zeus, and the Wolverine. I've been pretending to work while growing increasingly nervous. After this many years, I'm not usually nervous on a job, but I've never played 'double agent' before, either. Yet I'm not sure that's a fair description. I may have left the Brotherhood, but I'm not one of Charles Xavier's X-Team. I don't know whose side I'm on now; I'm as indeterminate as my form I've made sure I'm the one monitoring the supply gate when the Brotherhood boat arrives. On the screen, I watch it dock. I suppose I could trigger the alarms and let them be caught right now . . . except they wouldn't be caught. Lilith can teleport to safety, and there's not a police unit out there who can stop Wolverine on a rampage. Human security might manage to hold Zeus, but only if they knocked him out before he called down the lightning. Lucifer isn't here yet anyway, so there's no point in blowing the whistle; they'll have to be halted by people who are capable of it -- and that's not Liberty Island security.

So everything goes exactly the way it's supposed to, the way we planned. They enter and subdue all the security downstairs at the close of the sightseeing day. Up in the main security room, I subdue the rest; they don't even know what hit them. Tying them up, I dump them in a closet, though I suspect the guards below won't be so lucky. I will kill at need, but only at need, and if humans slaughter our kind without compunction, that doesn't mean I'll lower myself to their level. "They're just humans," Raven had said to me once, and I'd replied, "So are my parents."

"You're going to have to pick a side, Jean," she'd told me. "And the humans aren't on yours."

"I can be on the side of mutants without hating _every_ human," I'd retorted.

Raven might have answered that, but Erik had stepped in. "Let's not fight among ourselves. It's undignified."

Later, Raven had caught me alone, whispering, "You think your parents are _proud_ of their mutant daughter? That they _love_ you? Then why do they always insist that you take a human form when you visit them?" And her words had cut because I couldn't entirely refute them. "You're such a naive child," she'd gone on, stroking my hair almost like a mother. "I have no idea why Erik puts up with you." And she'd bamfed away.

I wonder now if it was Raven who poisoned Erik against me. Lilith tolerates no rival, especially not another woman, even if she's just a daughter. And it's Raven who teleports now into the main security room to fetch me. "All clear," she says.

"Excellent," I reply and, as soon as she turns her back, I hit her hard from behind. She doesn't even have time to cry out. First, I administer a little shot that will keep her under for hours, then put her in the closet with the guards. I can't afford to have the real Raven wake prematurely.

I was wrong earlier. I do have a side, and my true mission hasn't changed. I joined Erik because I want to make the world a safer place for mutant children -- and I'm leaving him for that same reason. "I chose my side," I whisper into the ear of the unconscious form in the closet. Then morphing into her form, I remove the communicator from her wrist and snap it onto mine, departing to join Zeus as he prepares the disguised mini-Cerebra to be lifted up all the way to the statue's torch, where our version will replace theirs. Fortunately, Wolverine isn't with him. I can change my form but I can't change my scent, and the further I stay from Creed, the better. "Where's Jean?" Dominic asks. "Wasn't she supposed to come help?"

"I told her to stay there. Someone needs to keep monitoring the place."

"Why?"

I turn to glare at him with Raven's gold eyes. "Because, you idiot, someone could still interrupt us. Better safe than sorry."

"Oh."

That was easy, I think. Now, if only Erik can be fooled so well when he arrives.

  


***

"But why can't I go? She's my sister!"

I would have laughed if his face weren't so earnest. The kid was flat on his back in the medbay, still weak from blood loss, not to mention the puncture wounds in his shoulder, yet he wanted to go on a dangerous mission? _Piotr,_ I jot on my pad, _I understand she's your sister, but you're not in any shape to fight._ I didn't explain that we probably wouldn't have let him go even if he _were_ able. We weren't in the habit of throwing kids into combat, although unlike most of the students here, Piotr was nineteen and technically an adult.

"She's my sister!"

_I know. But you're seriously wounded._

"Everybody gets to go but me!"

That stings. I write, _Nyet, Piotr, 'everybody' doesn't. I'm deaf, and moreover, I don't have an offensive or defensive power. I'm a liability in a situation like this. I'm staying behind, too._

He blushes a little, saying, "Oh." He's not entirely placated, but things have been put in perspective for him.

Rising, I head out, finding Logan and Hank already in the hallway leading to the hangar. Even after so long, the sight of them in uniform while I remain in civilian clothes bothers me. Unlike Xavier, I can't monitor missions from Cerebro, participating at least vicariously.

Ro exists the women's locker as I approach. "Be careful," I tell them, needlessly. Logan growls and turns away, heading for the hangar, but Ro and Hank nod. They understand what I don't say -- that I want to be with them. With a pat on my shoulder, Hank follows Logan, leaving Ro and I alone.

She watches me. "Have you heard more from Jean Grey?"

"No. She told me she wouldn't be able to contact me again."

"Scott, how much will she help us?" It was the same question Logan had asked earlier.

"Like I said, I don't know. She won't stop you. How much she'll be able to help -- your guess is as good as mine." I pause, then add, "Bring her back, if she'll come. She can't return to them now." Ro's lips thin and I know what she's thinking. "She's not our enemy, Polaris. Having a difference of opinion on methodology doesn't automatically make her our enemy. Life choices aren't all either-or, like the poles on a magnet."

"_If_ I get a chance, I'll ask her," Ro concedes. "But Scott, if she fights us, we'll fight back. Maybe you can afford to see more than one side in a conflict, but in combat, you stop them or they stop you. This isn't a debate we're going to."

Annoyed, I turn on my heel, deliberately giving her my back to show the conversation is over. "Words are needed, too, Polaris," I call. "Wars don't end with the last shot. They end with a treaty."

I don't know if she tries to answer. One advantage of being deaf is that you can get the last word in an argument, or at least pretend to.   
  


* * *

  
Feedback always welcome.  
  



	5. How the Leopard Changed Her Spots III

**HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED HER SPOTS  
Part III  
****Minisinoo  
  
**

Dominic and I have climbed all the way to the statue's crown by the time Lucifer joins us with Wolverine, who's carrying the girl in his arms. Only the telekinesis of Lucifer can raise our false torch the 306 feet from the ground below to the statue's fist. We watch as it shudders, then begins to rise, up, up. Meanwhile, Erik rips off the old torch head and casually tosses it into the bay. Our own settles in its place and is locked down. "Soon," he says, "the whole world will have a new light of freedom -- freedom from fear."

I glance at Wolverine while Erik speaks, hoping that, up here in the winds over two hundred feet above the sea, Wolverine can't smell me enough to know I'm not who I look like. When Erik finishes securing the new torch, he turns to me. "Where is Jean?"

"In the guardroom."

He frowns. "That wasn't the plan." But he seems more annoyed than suspicious.

I decide to take a chance, though if my guess is wrong, it could be fatal. "I know," I say with Raven's typical brusqueness. "I figured it'd be best, all things considered. The later she finds out about the girl . . ."

"Ah, yes." He shrugs and appears to accept this. "Are we ready to ascend?" He glances at me. "When I've transferred my power to the girl, I'll need you to teleport me down again."

I simply nod, though we won't be teleporting anywhere. I don't have Raven's powers, but it doesn't matter. This is part of _my_ plan, to be isolated with a weakened Erik while Zeus and the Wolverine are elsewhere. Once Lucifer has given his power to the girl, I'll be able to knock him unconscious and get the girl free. If she has Lucifer's power, she can get us down -- I hope. And deal with Wolverine and Zeus, as well.

But before Erik can raise us, we hear the purr of a stealth jet, passing by the island. What rotten timing and I curse under my breath as Dominic curses in Greek. Erik turns to glare at me. "I thought you said Charles Xavier was taken care of and wouldn't get back to Westchester in time?"

I have no idea what he's talking about, but I've been in such situations before and bulled my way through them. Putting on my best annoyed face, I reply, "I thought he _was_."

"How could they have known then?"

"The future-teller?" Dominic asks.

"He was on the plane, as well." Erik turns back to me. "So I was told . . ."

"I thought he was!" I say, though I still have no idea what they're referring to. Apparently Raven was told to stop Xavier's return to Westchester. Did she cause the plane to crash? Is Xavier alive or dead? Why didn't Scott say something to me? (_Because you didn't give him a chance_, my sensible side retorts. I hadn't had a lot of time to chat yesterday.)

"You didn't verify they were both on Worthington's plane?" Erik demands.

There's no reason to save Raven's reputation, and if they assume Warren Worthington is behind the X-Team's arrival, Erik won't look further for an internal leak. "It was Worthington's plane," I say. "I assumed _he'd_ be on it!"

"Raven, you know better than that. We'll discuss it later. All three of you, go below and stop them."

Wolverine growls and hands Erik the girl, then turns on his heel to depart, Dominic following. I hesitate. I don't want stuck in the narrow stairwell with Creed. He'll _smell_ me for sure there, not to mention that the real Lilith wouldn't bother with stairs in the first place.

"What are you waiting for?" Erik asks. "Go."

"Yes, Lucifer." I back away, hoping he doesn't register that I didn't simply bamf right from the spot, and take my time getting to the stairwell so the other two have already started down. I make my own descent cat-silent, and by the time I reach the base, the battle is already underway with Polaris pitted against Zeus, and Beast and Sabretooth against Wolverine. Apparently, Zeus just discovered that he can't hurt the magnetic bitch with lightning. Charged air sparks all around her, flickering blue like St. Elmo's Fire over her green hair. When I appear from the stairwell, Beast turns to square off against me, leaving Sabretooth to deal with his old nemesis. The noise of their bellowing fills the room and I flip past Beast, aiming for the second level rails. Grabbing one, I fling myself onto the rim; he follows. Excellent. We're above (and away from) the others.

I lure him further off until I think we're sufficiently distant, then let my whole form shimmer and my eyes phase back to their normal green. He stops cold. "You're not Lilith, are you?"

"No," I say.

"Where is Lilith?"

"Locked in a closet in the security room along with the security guards."

"Whose side are you on, Jean Grey?"

"The same side I've always been on, Hank McCoy -- that of mutants."

He grins abruptly. "I can see why Scott likes you." But he grows serious again and speaks urgently. "Lucifer's machine doesn't work. We have to stop him from using it."

"What? I thought you came for the girl?"

"We did. But it's much bigger than that now -- Senator Kelly is dead."

"How? I mean, how do you know the machine doesn't work?"

"I _am_ a doctor." It's droll. "The DNA change doesn't last. Kelly came to the mansion when he didn't know where else to go. His body had begun breaking down within hours of the alteration. He died late this morning -- simply disintegrated into base components."

I can scarcely believe it. "Scott didn't tell me about that." But again, I hadn't given him much time to tell me anything, and he'd been more interested in trying to get me to leave. "We did tests. Before using a human, we did tests on animals. The machine worked."

"Did you see the animals afterwards?"

"Yes." But then I remember -- I only saw them _immediately_ afterwards. "I saw them, but -- Raven. It was Raven who reported the long-term results." I'd never thought to doubt her. Hank watches me work through the implications while the shouts of conflict drift up to us from below. We don't have forever for philosophical discussion here. "Erik doesn't know, Dr. McCoy. If he did, he wouldn't go through with this."

"Are you so sure?"

"What's the point if they die?"

"True. But human beings have a remarkable capacity to hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe, even in the face of contradictory evidence."

"We have to tell him. We have to stop this. If it kills all those people . . ." I don't even want to think about the result for mutants, and turn to go.

"Mystique, wait. Think."

"We don't have time to chat, Beast. He'll listen to me. I have to tell him."

"_Will_ he listen to you? _Will_ he believe you? Where is _your_ evidence coming from?"

And he's struck right at the heart of my own doubts. I'm not sure Erik does believe or trust me anymore, much less trust Xavier's team. But I trust them. Hank McCoy is telling me the truth as far as he knows it, and he's in a position to know. "We have to destroy mini-Cerebra."

"Yes, we do. Can you get us to Lucifer? Will you help us?"

I nod once. "I'll help. But you've got to trust me. For Scott's sake, if nothing else."

"How about if I trust you for your own?"

Smiling slightly, I glance to the floor below. Sabretooth and Wolverine are nowhere in sight, apparently having taken their fight elsewhere, but Polaris and Zeus are still below. Both look battered, and she rips up the floor to encase him but he twists it away with tornado-force winds. "Stay here," I tell Beast, sliding down a pole and grabbing a bit of fiberglass molding sliced off by Wolverine's claws. Seeing me coming, Zeus calls out, "Lilith!" The boy really is an idiot, announcing the cavalry sneaking up from behind. Polaris whips around, but I'm somersaulting past her before she can stop me. Using the fiberglass, I hammer Zeus into unconsciousness.

Beast has dropped over the railing, too, loping to join us. With this battle over, we can hear the roars of Wolverine and Sabretooth echoing somewhere in the distance. Polaris is staring at me with her mouth open and I glance around quickly, then shift into my own form and back into Raven's. Comprehension crosses her face. "She's going to help," Beast says.

"Let's go find Sabretooth, then."

"You find Sabretooth. I have to get back to Erik."

Polaris glares. "I thought you were on our side?"

"And do you think I'll do you more good showing up with you, or letting Erik think I'm on his side?"

"He's a telepath, won't he know?"

"People tend to accept what their eyes tell them. But keep Wolverine away. Erik will suspect only if he thinks to, but all Wolverine needs is one good whiff."

Nodding, they head off, leaving me. I kneel by Dominic. He's bloodied in several places, and I dab some of that blood onto the fur of my borrowed form. I need to look suitably cut up, then I head for the stairs. It's a long climb a second time, and I'm panting by the time I reach the top. "Erik!" I call out as I reach the torch platform. "Zeus is down, Mystique is down. We need to evacuate!"

A small door opens in the torch's side and a moment later, he floats onto the platform. The wind whips his silver hair and red cape. "I don't think that will be necessary. _Jean_."

I freeze where I'm standing, and wish I really did have Raven's powers to teleport away. "How did you know?"

"When you admitted to not verifying that Destiny was on the plane. Raven would never be so careless -- nor would she admit to it, if she had been."

"But you sent me down with the others --"

"It made no difference. No one can stop me now. And please -- take your own form. No need to maintain the charade."

I obey, but I'm not surrendering yet. "Mini-Cerebra doesn't work, Erik. The change doesn't last; it just kills. Senator Kelly is _dead_!"

"Who told you this? Xavier's pet dogs? We've conducted experiments ourselves; the machine works."

"It was Raven who gave the final reports. She _lied_."

"You don't think I'd know, if she had?"

Furious, I miscalculate. "You didn't know I was seeing Scott for three years!"

Lost in fury, he backhands me, knocking me into the railing so that I almost overbalance, and I grip cold metal as he shouts into the wind, "I trusted you! And you repaid me in betrayal!"

"I did not!" I wipe blood off the corner of my mouth. "Not once in three years. But question you? Yes! Am I not allowed to question you, if I think you're wrong? It was you who taught me to question in the first place. It was you who taught me to use my mind critically! Does that only apply to others?"

"If you were using your mind _critically_, you'd realize how you've let Xavier's people manipulate your emotions. Scott Summers doesn't _love_ you, Mystique. You're useful to him. Yet you're ready to sacrifice everything you believe in for this phantom _love_. Women always were the weaker sex, easily mislead by feelings."

And I don't know whether I want to scream or cry, and whether it's because he doubts the authenticity of Scott's feelings, or because he doubts me for my gender. "I don't think it's Scott who's deceived me," I say. "I think it's _you_. If you really thought so little of me, why'd you call me the daughter of your heart?"

His expression is bemused. "But I don't think little of you, Jean. Fathers _protect_ their daughters. We recognize their virtues and weaknesses, direct them towards what's best for them. I gave you missions that suited your unique talents, missions that didn't require you to make ideological choices you were ill-suited to make -- as you've proved by this ill-starred affair with Xavier's brat."

Bitterness tastes like wormwood. "What about _your_ friendship with Xavier?"

"I've never let emotional attachment get in the way of necessity, Jean."

"You assume I would?"

"It's quite clear that you _have_. You've sided with them, have you not?"

"I haven't sided with anyone except mutants! It's _you_ who've stepped over the line, Lucifer."

I remember what Hank said to me earlier about people being unable to see the truth even if it was right under their noses. "Your machine doesn't work," I continue, "but you refuse to believe that because it doesn't _suit_ you to believe. Is that rational? And even if it did work, what makes you think that little girl" -- I point to the torch where Ilyana must be strapped already into the seat of mini-Cerebra -- "can possibly make the changes to DNA that you can? It takes more than raw power, and deep down, you know it! You kept the full truth from me because you _knew_ I was the one who'd see the flaws in your plan and confront you about them! Dominic is too stupid, and Wolverine only cares about Wolverine. As for Raven -- she hates humans. She'd do anything to start a war with them. The more humans dead, the better, as far as she's concerned. Of course she'd lie to you about the results, because it meant you'd go through with this insane idea!"

He's enraged now and I watch it fire his eyes while red flames lick all around his body. "So King David must have felt," he thunders, "when faced by Absalom."

"No," I spit back, "so _Tamar_ must have felt when David wouldn't pursue justice because he didn't want to see the truth about his _other_ son! _Absalom_ did the honorable thing, Erik! Not David!"

"Enough! If you think Absalom right, then die like he did!" And I feel a TK fist grab me and fling me over the edge of the walkway, out into space. And I know I will die, just as Erik said. The harbor is a _long_ way down, and at this height, hitting the water will be like hitting concrete. Even if I survived the impact, I'd be too broken up to swim.

Except I don't fall, or not more than a few feet. I stop with a jerk that almost dislocates my shoulder and find myself glued to the bottom of the walkway by the metal communicator on my wrist -- the only foreign object on my body. My heart is pounding in my chest and for two breaths, I'm just too surprised to react. Then I grab a support strut with my free hand and swing my body up to lock my legs around it while glancing about wildly. Below, on the observation deck of Liberty's crown, I spot Polaris, one hand flung out towards me. She's flanked by Beast and Sabretooth. No sign of Wolverine. I want to warn them that Erik knows about me, but the fact I'm in my own form and dangling from Liberty's false torch should be a mighty big clue.

I don't know exactly what happens next because I'm too busy holding on. I do know that Polaris must have created a diversion for her rescue of me. I hear a lot of shouting and see the red glow of Lucifer's power above me, and the quick peek I take back towards Xavier's three shows them thrown back inside the crown. Well, what had they expected, going up against a man who's arguably the most powerful mutant on the planet? (Whether that title belongs to Lucifer or Xavier is a matter of opinion.) But I can't help them now, not directly. The best way I can help them is to get back up on that platform.

The wind at this height is horrible. It blows my hair into my face and freezes my fingers and toes, and I'm all too conscious of the fact I'm 300 feet above the harbor. Every muscle in my body has cramped and I toy for a moment with just letting go. It might be easier than hauling my ass back into a fight that I'm probably going to lose. But I've never surrendered in my life and I'm not starting now, so with my legs still tight about the strut, I release one hand to reach for a new handhold, then scoot my body after. And so it goes. Reach, grip, pull, scoot, reach, grip, pull, scoot. It becomes my mantra.

I've made it to the edge of the platform when abruptly, shards of the ceramic torch encasing mini-Cerebra explode outwards, and I know that Lucifer has succeeded in transferring his power to the girl and started the machine. He must think himself unassailable. A quick glance around shows the sky red above me, and a little below, on the crown, I can see that the X-Team is distracted. Wolverine's shown up. He and Sabretooth square off once more, but that doesn't last long before Polaris just lifts Creed by the metal on his bones and flings him out into the bay.

_Recover from that_, I think. Of course he will -- but not immediately, and that's all I care about. The red glow is spreading, seeping out across the water, and even if the X-team ran down the stairs to the arm level and then climbed back up, there's simply no way they can reach the torch in time. Polaris can fly to a limited degree by manipulating the earth's magnetic fields, but I doubt she can handle the high winds at this altitude. I'm the only real chance the girl Ilyana has, the only chance the diplomats on Ellis Island have, but I have only minutes to get myself back up there and stop the process.

Then I feel a pull at my wrist, on the communicator, and glance around. Polaris has her hand out once more, trying to help, or at least make sure I don't fall. And if her magnetic touch really doesn't assist much, just knowing she could catch me again gives me the guts to move faster until, hand on a strut of the railing, I peer over the platform floor. No Lucifer. He must still be in mini-Cerebra and the bottom of the false torch hides me from his view. The sky above is even redder, six great wings of fiery glory reaching up into the sky as if Liberty gripped a seraph in her fist. I'm almost out of energy -- so tired. But if I can just get over the edge without being seen . . .

One leg up, knee bent, I pull with both arms and feel my belly slide over the freezing cold metal floor. But annoyingly, I'm too _big_ in my natural form to fit under the rail. "Shit," I mutter. I'll have to shift, compress my mass to make myself small. It's not that I lose actual weight in a shift. Mass is a constant, but density isn't, not for me. It took me years to learn to adopt forms that were appreciably larger or smaller, but even so, I have limits. I couldn't turn myself into Scott's cat -- which is too bad; there might be advantages to being a cat right now. Then I realize the railing is shifting, rising up -- Polaris, of course. She's making it easy for me to get up there even if she can't get there herself, or affect mini-Cerebra directly. I drag myself the last few inches to safety, then lie still a moment, panting, though the floor is iron cold and the red wings around us have expanded half the distance. Above, I can see Erik kneeling just outside the door of mini-Cerebra, his shoulders slumped -- his back to me.

"Up, Mystique," I whisper, crawling towards the central pole so that I'm directly below the torch and hidden again. I've been lucky so far, and I glance towards the crown. It's just Polaris there now, watching. Sabretooth and Beast must be on their way, even though they know they can't reach the torch in time. Pulling myself up, I try to think. Even weakened, Erik is formidable, and there's a _reason_ Polaris can't just stop the machine directly. Erik can block her even now. But sometimes the simple approach is best; I just need a weapon. Glancing towards the rail, I point to it, miming me swinging a baseball bat -- hoping Polaris gets the idea.

And indeed, one of the lower crossbeams detaches itself to float towards my hand. Snatching it out of midair, I glance up. Unfortunately, if Erik can't see me, I can't see him, either, but I assume he hasn't moved, and if I climb up the rear, the machine itself will block my presence. Only the front is see-through. So I scuttle up a small, built-in ladder to the back rim. I'm betting if he's facing any direction, it's towards the statue and Ellis Island, and I edge around the opposite way. Sure enough, when Erik comes into view, his back is towards me once again.

Raising the iron bar, I bring it down on his head, not hard enough to shatter the skull -- even now, I can't kill him -- but he drops like a bull six feet onto the platform below.

I waste no time verifying that he's out, and yanking open the door, find the girl twisting in the seat, screaming silently. I know I might kill her if I shut off the machine while a person is locked into it, but I'm out of time and alternate recourse. I bring down the iron bar on the delicate control panel. The crash is loud, and the girl has time to draw one breath before the red-flare effect disappears -- sucked right back into her. She stiffens, then collapses in the seat.

Dropping the bar, I tug off the helmet and unfasten the straps, then check her pulse, careful to keep her glove in place. Flutter, flutter. Pause. Flutter. Longer pause. Flutter. Longer pause. "No," I hiss. After all this, she's going to die anyway. Picking her up in my arms, careful not to touch skin just in case, I carry her out of the machine and look down at the torch platform below. Lucifer lies crumpled on the deck; that's the good news. The bad news is that it's still six feet down. Alone, I could make it easily, but carrying the girl, I might twist an ankle.

Suddenly, a door in the platform slams open and Beast surges up, swinging himself into a fighting crouch. He spots first the unconscious Lucifer, then me, standing above him. "Is she alive?" he shouts over the wind.

"I'm not sure!" I shout back, and pass her down to him. He bends to examine her and starts CPR as I leap onto the deck to join him.

Sabretooth is pulling himself onto the deck now, too. He nods to me, cautiously, but speaks to the doctor. "The girl?"

McCoy doesn't reply, just shakes his head, though he's still working. Sabretooth pushes him aside, not roughly, but not gently. Dropping to his knees, he takes the girl's hands and pulls off her gloves, then claps them to the sides of his own face. At first, I'm not sure what on earth he's doing, but then I recall that, like Wolverine, he's a healer.

"Come on, kid," he says. Beast and I watch, yet there's no response. She remains limp in his grasp. McCoy hangs his head and I glance over my shoulder towards Ellis Island. It seems cold, but I can't help thinking that even if we lose the girl, we saved all those people and that's not a bad trade-off. Yet I can see boats on the way -- no doubt police or harbor patrol. And a helicopter is lifting off.

"We need to go," I tell them. "Unless you want to be arrested."

"What should we do with Lehnsherr?" Beast asks.

"Give him something to put him under for a while and leave him."

"They won't be able to hold a telepathic-telekinetic of his strength -- "

"And staying here to confront the police is going to solve that problem?" I snap. "Try explaining the situation to biased, mutant-nervous police."

Before he can retort, there's a hiss and we whip our heads around to look. The girl is jerking in Sabretooth's grip -- alive. And Sabretooth is jerking, too, gasping like a beached fish; veins stand out under his skin. McCoy leaps forward to pull him away from the girl's deadly hands, and she crumples onto her side, still sucking in air. We have our miracle for the evening, I think. But the boats are still coming, and the helicopter is closing on us, searchlights swinging. "Come on," I say, hurrying forward to grab the girl and unceremonious sling her over my shoulder, heading down into the arm's stairwell. "The sooner we can get out of here, the better."  
  


***

I'm stuck watching events unfold on television, just as unable to affect them as any other viewer but condemned to suffer by greater knowledge of what's going on.

The students and I have gathered around the television in the den. There aren't so many students at the school, even now -- perhaps thirty-five, total -- and Hank's permitted Piotr to escape the medbay for the evening. He takes up most of one couch. Despite the language barrier, the kids have accepted him into their midst. Some of that owes to sympathy, but some boils down to the simple fact he's an attractive young man. Jubilee, Kitty and Marie all vie to fetch him pillows or a glass of water . . . much to Bobby's dismay. Gloomy with jealousy, he slouches beside me and distracts himself by making tiny time-bombs. Funny, how the small dramas of life go on, even with something so critical looming over us all.

Not that the kids know how much rides on tonight. They do know that Piotr's sister was kidnapped, and they know Ro took out the team earlier; the jet's departure is hard to hide. And they assume (rightly) that the team went after the girl. But they don't know the rest of it -- and I'm not telling them. No one saw Kelly's arrival but the adults, and no one else knows of Lucifer's plans to transform the diplomats on Ellis Island -- and use Ilyana to do it. Even Piotr doesn't know all of it. The kids are watching the summit because it affects them as mutants. I'm watching the summit, hoping that everything stays quiet. And for a while, my hopes are met; there's little footage of Liberty, just a few shots of her rising spotlighted in the background. Nothing appears amiss.

Half an hour into the summit, things change. There's burst of red light from off-screen left, and a pause in the closed-captioning. All the kids sit up and take notice, and I can tell they're chattering to each other even as the camera swings towards Liberty Island.

The statue's torch is glowing. _This wasn't a scheduled display_, the caption says at the screen bottom, followed by useless questions. Within seconds, flames seem to lick upward into the night and the commentators are asking if the torch (improbably) has caught on fire. But this isn't real fire. I know what it is. _Lucifer_, I mouth. In the hubbub of the den, no one notices, though Bobby is pulling on my sleeve, trying to get my attention. I hold up a hand, hushing him and lying, "I don't know anymore than you do."

The Lucifer Effect is growing, spreading out from Liberty towards Ellis Island, and my heart slams hard inside my ribcage while my gut seizes. They must have failed, and that means they may be dead. In that moment, and despite the imminent danger to every human at the summit -- not to mention the worldwide impact that transforming them would have -- my main fear is for the people I know, not the people I don't. Jaw clenched, I grip the couch cushion, while around me, kids are on their feet. They can still remember 9-11 and are starting to get hysterical. So are the diplomats on Ellis Island. On-screen, we see security running through the crowd, trying to initiate a useless evacuation while the camera bobs as the carrier is moved along with the rest. And I'm not sure I can breathe, much less make myself move, but I have to. I'm the only adult here with the kids, the only one they have right now. (Please, God, not the only one they have left.) "Calm down!" I call out, aloud. "Calm down!"

And then, right before our eyes, the red light vanishes completely, as if it never had been. And the den goes utterly silent -- even I can tell. Questions follow, both in the captions on the screen and from the kids around me. I tell them I don't know. And I don't. I don't know what happened, but I feel an overwhelming relief. They're still alive. Or someone is. Someone stopped Lucifer, and I wish I knew who, and whether Jean is with them. I can be forgiven for worrying about her, I think. Before long, I find an excuse to get away from the kids, leaving them under the watchful eye of the older students. I tell them I'm going to go find out what I can, as if I have some magical source, and they let me go, probably assuming I do. But I just need to be alone.

Ducking into Xavier's office, I slam the door and sink down into one of the leather chairs in front of the desk, my eyes closed, blocking out everything. I concentrate on simply breathing -- in, out, in, out. _Please, be okay,_ I think. _Please, please._ All I can do is wait, and I feel sick to my stomach. I can face a crowd of several thousand, or the whole U.S. Senate. But waiting alone and helpless here, now, I'm the most frightened I've ever been.  
  


* * *

  
**Feedback always welcome.**   



	6. How the Leopard Changed Her Spots IV

**HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED HER SPOTS  
Part IV  
****Minisinoo**

The only way off the island is the X-plane -- or a police chopper -- so when the X-Team offers me a ride, I don't turn them down. I hadn't been planning to go back to my old life anyway, and now that the mission is over, the bitter ramifications strike. 'Jean Grey' will have to disappear, or my former teammates will come after me. Yet the only ones who saw me at the end were Xavier's people; maybe the Brotherhood can be convinced that Lucifer _did_ throw me into the sea. Like a Phoenix -- or less poetically, a member of the Witness Protection Program -- I'll resurrect from the dead as a new person.

Delayed reaction is setting in, as well, and I spend half the return flight shivering, a blanket wrapped around me and another around the girl Ilyana in the plane's rear section. The semi-conscious lion man -- Sabretooth -- is stretched out on the other bench across from us. One minute, Ilyana speaks in her own small voice in a language I don't know, then she says something in German that sounds like Erik, or she growls like Sabretooth. It's . . . disconcerting, to say the least. I hadn't given much thought to how her own power works besides borrowing the gifts of others, but apparently she gets more than just powers. "It's going to be okay," I tell her, and the smile she returns is so like Erik's cynical sufferance that it chills me. How much of him lies now inside her? Should I fear her as I might fear him? Can she read my mind?

"Yes," she whispers, still smiling, and I'm not sure what the 'yes' is in response to, but I pull away from her and curl up in a far corner of the bench, watching. She takes the other corner and her expression slides from the cool of Lucifer to the fear of a child and she says something to me that I can't understand. Then she frowns and, to my surprise, speaks again in English -- accessing the knowledge of Erik and the cat man, but under the control of her own personality. "You saved me, didn't you?"

"I had help. But I stopped the machine and untied you, yes."

She nods. "Thank you." Then she looks off. "I won't let him hurt you."

I blink, unsure what I think of that. "How long . . . I mean, when you . . . absorb . . . someone, are they inside you forever?"

For a moment, I'm not sure if she's understood, but then she turns blue eyes back to me. Her voice is her own, but her enunciation is reminiscent of Erik. "I'm uncertain how it works. I didn't know -- didn't realize -- I could access knowledge without personality, such as English. I don't know if that will last, either, as the personality . . . fades." Then she stops and her chin tilts as she considers. "For the first few hours when I absorb someone, it's -- intense. Then it lessens. But it never goes away, not completely." I nod and we sit in silence for a while, still watching each other, until she asks, "Does it hurt? When you change?"

Shouldn't Erik know that? But I realize abruptly that he's never asked, while it was one of the first questions from Scott when I first revealed myself to him, and I consider the implications of the difference. "No," I tell her. "Not like you mean. It feels like stretching muscles. If I _hold_ a form for too long, then yes, I get sore. Like a muscle cramp."

"It took a lot of practice, didn't it?"

"Yes and no, and it depends on the form." I pause; I have no idea how much she's been told. "Erik thinks it's partly instinct -- that we're born with the knowledge of how to use our powers, but we still have to train and perfect them. My first forms were simply variations on my own." And I shift, showing her my 'human' face. "This was my first change." Then I shift back to my natural form. "You see?"

"They're basically the same."

"Exactly. To make bigger shifts -- to change my size, for instance, that took time to learn. Mass doesn't change; I always weigh 142 pounds. It's distribution. If I were to mimic him" -- I gesture to Sabretooth who, I notice, is listening without being obvious about it -- "I'd have to . . . stretch myself. I don't know how I do it exactly, but I had to practice."

"Do you think I'll ever learn to control my power?" It's plaintive.

"I assume so, but yours is harder to work on." I glance at Sabretooth again, wondering if he's safe for her to use as a guinea pig, or if he'd even be willing. His eyes are fully open now and he's watching me. They're hazel, but with that overlarge pupil they appear black. And it's an odd expression he's wearing -- curiosity, yes, but also plain male appreciation and I'm not sure how I feel about that; men don't usually like me blue. Scott was the first. Even Dominic preferred me 'looking human,' and I wonder if the cat man is just considering the possibilities -- I could be any woman he desires.

I turn away and avoid his eyes for the rest of the trip. He makes no attempt to talk to me, and the girl has also grown quiet again; I'm happy for the silence. When we arrive at their mansion and the plane has settled into its hangar, McCoy gets Sabretooth off with Polaris's help, and I lead the girl. Stepping down onto the concrete floor, the blanket I've wrapped around myself trailing the floor, I spot two figures at a distance. One is a big kid whom the girl apparently knows because she explodes out from under my hands with a shout of "Piotr!" and races towards him. The other is Scott, my Uriel, who looks tense and worried. I'm not sure if he's guarding the gate to Eden or to hell, but at least he smiles as I approach. _Are you okay?_ He signs.

"Yeah," I say aloud, and then I'm hugging him, or he's hugging me, I'm not sure who moved first. His fingers are in my hair and I just want to cry -- but master spies don't cry. "I love you," I say, though he can't hear. I need to say it. Over his shoulder, I can see both the kids staring, though the girl is smiling, too. I tap Scott's shoulder and he lets me go. I gesture to the kids. He glances from me to them, then pulls a pad from his breast pocket, scribbling something on it that's not just a different language, but a different _script_. He hands it to the boy. _What language _do_ they speak?_ I sign.

_Russian_, he finger spells.

_Ah. Well, the girl can speak English now, too_. He looks at me in surprise, and I explain, _Residue of Erik. And your Sabretooth. What did you tell them about me?__  
  
That you're my girl._ _That's all?_

He laughs, but eyes me._ What else would you want me to say?_

He has a point; the complexity of the situation might be a little hard to get across in a handful of sentences, but I shake my head. _I don't know. I don't know who I am anymore._

_You're my girl. How about if we start there and figure out the rest as we go?_

I might have replied but Ilyana was speaking to the boy, Piotr, and now he reaches out to take my hand, gripping it with charming gentleness, his thanks clear without the need for words at all. Ilyana does the same, her gloves soft against my fingers, then they go upstairs together.

Scott and I follow, his arm around my waist atop the blanket and I think about what he said. His girl. It's sweet, in a high-school kind of way, yet I can never be just that, nor would I want to define myself by a relationship to someone else, even while this relationship remains central to me. I _am_ Scott's girl, but that's only part of my life, and not even a part I could publicly admit to until recently. We're going to have to see who we are as a 'we' in the wake of this, not just who I am. So many questions remain to be addressed.

I remember, as we exit the hangar, that all I'm wearing is the blanket, and while I don't precisely look nude even when I am -- an oddity of physiology and scales -- I'm conscious of it nonetheless and start to shift -- but Scott shakes his head. _Don't, _he signs. _You don't need to do that, here._

"But --"

Scott just shakes his head again. _This school was created so no one has to hide who he or she is._

So earnest. And completely missing the point. _I'm not trying to hide that I'm a mutant, Scott._ _But in case you didn't notice, all I've got on is a blanket that hangs open in front. I don't want to scandalize your students._

He blushes (so cutely) and glances down my body, mouths, "Oh." Then signs, _Come on. I'll get you some clothes._

I follow, wondering where we're going. I know the mansion has an underground bunker where (among other things) they keep their plane. Erik's told me about it, and I've seen drawings based on his memories, but I've never been to Westchester, much less the mansion, so being admitted now to their inner sanctum had the spy in me delirious with excitement, despite everything. There's something obscene about my curiosity sometimes, and I wonder if I'll be cataloguing details at my mother's funeral. Probably.

Now, Scott leads me from the hangar into a nondescript hallway, all metal, and perhaps Polaris helped in the construction. Lighting is fluorescent and recessed and there are small plaques above or beside doors, identifying what lies beyond. I read 'medlab' and 'danger room' (what the hell is a 'danger room'?), but we stop in an area where the hall widens, showing uniforms behind glass. There are also stacks of what look to be sweat clothes, too, workout clothes, no doubt. Scott halts before a locker with a woman's uniform -- apparently Polaris'. Opening the door and reaching in, he retrieves gray sweats and tosses them to me. _The pants might be a little short,_ he signs. I put them on, and the pants are, indeed, a little short, and there's no underwear. I notice a small "X" above the left breast and finger it. I won't wear these long, I think, though Scott seems pleased to see me in them. I may shift my form at need, but not my allegiances, and right now, I don't want to think too much about what I've done.

_I should check on Sabretooth_, Scott says, and I nod, following after him. He's my life raft in this place. When we enter the room marked 'medbay', the rest of the X-team is there and the big lion-man is flat on his back. It doesn't look as if he's eager to stay, but McCoy isn't letting him up, either, and Polaris is there to reinforce the doctor's orders. They all turn to look at us when we enter. Scott approaches the bed, though I remain by the door. Uncertainty and a desire not to intrude is only part of my reason; I want to watch their interaction. Reading people is what I do, and I've never seen Scott among his own. I'm under no illusions that my presence isn't noticed, but I'll still gain insight into Scott.

Positions say a lot about emotional alliances; Scott stands beside McCoy and across from Polaris, but he speaks (aloud) to Sabretooth. "How are you?"

"Feel like I got hit by a mack truck." The big man may not look smart, but he observes things, and he's aware. I remember his eyes in the plane. Now, he looks directly at Scott when he speaks and moves his mouth carefully to get past the problem of a beard that hampers lip-reading. It's a quiet sign of respect, and I remember how Sabretooth ripped off the girl's gloves and placed her hands on his own face so she could absorb his healing factor. Maybe I got her out of the machine, but Sabretooth actually saved her life. If he looks like an animal, his actions stand in stark contrast to Lucifer's.

"Did you talk to Warren?" McCoy is asking Scott. "Is there news about the professor?"

"Yes -- he came to a couple hours ago. The hospital wants to keep him overnight; he has a concussion, but otherwise, he didn't break anything in the crash. Apparently, his seatbelt came unlocked when the plane skidded, and dumped him on the floor. Everyone else is more or less okay -- bruised up, but okay."

I've been leaning into a wall, arms crossed, but now straighten up. This accident must be what Erik had referred to earlier. Polaris notices my movement. "What do you know about this?" she demands. McCoy and Scott turn to look at me.

"Not much," I reply, and approach. I've seen what I wanted to see. McCoy is Scott's friend, Sabretooth respects him, but Scott and Polaris are in opposition on some matters, even if they may agree in their devotion to Xavier. He told me she'd been his lover once, and I wonder if she's jealous.

Looking her in the eye, I sign as I speak, for Scott's convenience. "All I know is that, when your plane first arrived tonight at Liberty, Erik said to me -- who he thought was Lilith at the time -- hadn't I made sure that Xavier wouldn't arrive back in Westchester before the summit? So I'd say she's somehow responsible. It'd be easy for her to bypass security. She could teleport in from outside the airport grounds, as long as she knew where she was going. What exactly happened?"

_One of the engines malfunctioned, _Scott says. With me there, he chooses to sign, letting me do the speaking for him._ The plane spun out of control on the runway. But wouldn't the pilot have checked them before taking off?_

"Maybe. But she could have teleported right onto the wing and fouled up the engine once the plane was already in motion, then teleported away."

"Lucifer was trying to kill them," Polaris snaps.

I shake my head. "No. If he'd wanted them dead, they'd be dead. He wanted them held up."

"Funny way of showing his friendship for the professor," Polaris says, "to engineer an 'accident.'" She looks pointedly from me to Scott, and I understand the comparison she's making. I'm less horrified, perhaps, than I should be; it's a question I've had to consider before -- what would I do, to stop Scott from interfering in my plans? Fortunately, it was never a question I had to answer, but I'd like to think I wouldn't have endangered him physically.

In any case, there's another point here that needs to be made. "And you don't think your professor wouldn't order whatever it took to stop Erik?" I ask her.

"Lucifer was trying to kill people. The professor wasn't."

"Erik didn't know the change would kill people. And Xavier is still his friend."

"It's different."

"Enough!" Sabretooth rumbles from the bed. "Leave it for Charles and Erik to work through themselves, eh? Ain't you girls' business."

Polaris appears annoyed at both his interruption and his condescension, but Scott has stalked off from the table, standing with his back to us, arms crossed -- a silent gesture of frustration. Hank goes over to say something to him. The doctor can sign, too, I see, but it's rudimentary. He's telling Scott that he'll have to accept some suspicion of me on the part of the others.

Scott's frustration explodes. "In case you didn't notice," he replies aloud -- and loudly -- turning back towards the table, "Jean _helped_ you tonight. She's _here_."

"For a while," Polaris answers, still looking at me instead of Scott, and it's clear she neither likes nor trusts me, but I do owe her. She saved my life earlier.

Crossing to Scott, I lay my hand on his upper arm, a calming gesture. "It's all right," I tell him, speaking where he can see. "Take me to get something to eat. I haven't eaten since lunch and it's almost midnight now."

Glaring at the other three, he puts an arm around me and ushers me out. In the hall beyond, he signs. _I'm sorry for that._

_Don't be. Your doctor friend is right. And so is Polaris. I'm here -- for a while._

He appears taken aback. _You'd return to the Brotherhood after what Lucifer did?_

_No. But I'm not sure I can choose your side completely either, Scott. We've had this argument before. Several times. Nothing's changed except that Erik was willing to go further than I am._

_So how far are you willing to go?_ I think the question scares him, but he's angry enough to ask it.

_I don't know,_ I reply honestly. _But I do think there's a place in between your professor and Erik._

_Fence sitting._ It's almost contemptuous.

I'd walk away and leave him there, if I had any idea where I was going in this big place. But I don't. My lips thin. _Just get me something to eat, please._

_Fine._ And he turns, headed towards yet another door and leaving me to follow.

This isn't turning out to be quite the reunion I'd envisioned.  
  


***

"This is my room," I say aloud, because she's not looking at me, she's casing the place restlessly, Thutmose on her heels. The cat adores her, and so do I, no matter how infuriating she can be. "Well, I guess I should say it's the one I usually stay in, when I'm back here."

Turning, she bends down to pick up Thutmose, scratching him absently under the chin. "Did it use to be yours?"

"No. My old room was down the hall a ways -- more in the middle of things. This is a guest room. Other people use it, too, sometimes."

She smiles. "What do they think of the vibrator alarm?"

I smile back, remembering the first time we'd actually slept a whole night through together. I'd had work the next day, and had brought my travel alarm to the motel. When it had gone off at 6 a.m., shaking the bed, she'd practically hit the ceiling in shock. I guess it's something you have to get used to. Now, gesturing to the clock, I say, "You can unplug the bed shaker." I think she ought to know that, after three years, but it's indicative of the strangeness of this affair that she doesn't, and we're talking about inconsequentials to avoid another fight. I wonder if it's entirely appropriate to want to rip off the clothes I'd just supplied her with, when I'm as irritated at her as I am -- but that's always been part of this relationship, too, that tension of disagreement fueling the passion. It was also part of my relationship with Ororo, and I wonder if I have to be arguing with somebody to feel intense desire for her -- and why that is? Or maybe it's just that Jean and I haven't seen each other for two weeks, and I'm horny.

In any case, either she's learned to read my mind or she just knows me that well, because her eyes have dropped down my body to my crotch, and she grins. It's not smug; it's a little shy, in fact, and I've always found her embarrassed pleasure at my interest charming. She dumps the cat on the floor, and I walk over to her so she can unbutton my shirt while I kiss her, and we don't talk for half an hour until we've gotten the need out of our systems. Thutmose has fun pouncing on our feet under the sheets, and afterwards, we lay still, her head on my chest, her fingers still playing with me, stroking the skin of my belly, chest, arms, thighs, and penis. After a while, she lifts her head. The room's light is on; the bedside clock says it's two in the morning. _You know I love you_, she signs, and the way that's phrased bothers me.

_I know._ I wonder if we're going to start fighting again, but she simply lays her head back down on my chest and closes her eyes. After a while, I realize she's weeping. Her tears fall hot on my skin and I don't know what to say, or even why she's crying exactly, so I just hold her close and stroke her hair, her head tucked under my chin. "I love you, too," I tell her. It makes her cry harder.

I'm not sure when we fall asleep, but I wake to her shaking me, signing that someone is knocking on the door, and the sun is up. I'm actually a bit surprised that she's still there; I think I expected her to steal away in the middle of the night -- but where would she go now? The clock says it's 7:13, and I grab a robe on the way to the door. Ro is on the other side; she tries to sneak a look past me without being obvious about it as she hands me a newspaper. I make no attempt to obstruct her view. "I thought you would be eager to see this," she says. I unfold it. The headlines are predictable -- about the summit of the night before and the arrest of Lucifer, but I wonder at her assumption. 'Eager,' yes, but it could've waited until Jean and I came downstairs for breakfast. Was Ro just seeking an excuse to find out where Jean had spent the night? She might be clever on a battlefield, but social subterfuge isn't anything she's good at.

Now, I fold the paper under my arm and say, "Thanks. We'll be down to breakfast in a while."

She blinks, but, faced by both the bluntness of the 'we' and the clear hint that we want to go back to bed, she nods and says, "I'll see you in a while then."

Jean's sitting up on the sheets and holds out a hand for the paper. I pass it over, signing that I'm going to shower. She nods, already perusing. I wish I knew how she felt about last night, but Jean's never been good at talking about her feelings, or not any that she considers 'weak' (which, once, included love, but I think she's decided that loving me may not be an Achilles' heel after all). I make my shower quick, mostly because I have this irrational (or not-so-irrational) fear that if I leave her alone for too long, she'll be gone.

But she's not. She's still reading when I emerge from the bathroom, and I pause in the doorway, enjoying the simple _sight_ of her in this place where I never expected (but always dreamed) she'd be. She looks up, smiling at me. _Hey, beautiful,_ I sign, and she rolls her eyes, but I do believe she's blushing. With her complexion, it's sometimes hard to tell. Then she gestures for me to come to the bed, and points out a line.

_Three mutants were taken into custody after the incident. They were identified as Erik Lehnsherr, Raven Darkholm, and Dominic Petros. Instructions were given for their containment._

_Who left the instructions?_ She signs. _We were out of there in a hurry._

_Ororo probably called it in. _ At her blank look, I explain, _Ororo Munroe -- Polaris. Or Hank . . . Henry McCoy -- Beast._

_They won't be able to hold Raven long,_ she replies, _unless they keep her drugged. Or likely Erik, either, for the same reasons_.

_We know,_ I return.

_Scott, I need to go back to Washington NOW. This may be my only chance._

_Only chance?_

_To get anything from my apartment. Erik knew -- last night. He knew it was me. Raven . . . I knocked her out and stuck her in a closet. It won't take much for her to figure it out. Wolverine is still free, but he's not very smart that way. I doubt he's after me yet, but the others? This is my only chance, while they're still in custody. They'll kill me if they catch me._

I stare at her, suddenly realizing the full import of what she did to save that girl, and the diplomats, as well. It scares the shit out of me. _You can stay here. We'll protect you._

Her expression is impatient. _I can take care of myself. But what I need right now is a trip to Washington to fetch anything important from my place._

_You've got it._

_I'm going to have to 'die,' too -- do you understand? 'Jean Grey' has to die. Erik tried to kill me last night. Let them think he succeeded._

I just blink. _What?_

So she tells me the whole story, and I'm not sure if I'm more angry or more amazed. She finishes with, _Jean Grey fell into the bay and died. Give her a funeral -- I don't care. But the only way they'll not look for me is if they think I'm dead._

_Won't they suspect?_

_Maybe. But if Erik has a blind spot, it's his arrogance. He thinks he killed me; let him believe he succeeded._

I ponder this, wondering if I'm a good enough actor. _But what if your apartment turns up empty?_

_Oh, it won't be empty. I'm just taking what I want to keep. My parents can have the rest._

_Do you want me to tell them what happened?_

_No -- they have to believe I'm dead, Scott._

I blink again. Orphan that I am, I have a hard time with Jean's love-hate relationship with her parents. At least she _has_ parents, and they did -- and do -- care for her. _They don't deserve that._

Her expression is impatient. _I'll tell them the truth _eventually_. But for a while, I need them to really believe I'm gone. You've lived with Xavier. You know how to block a telepath. They don't. If Erik shows up and scans them, I can't have them thinking anything but that I'm dead._

And it makes sense, but it's horrible, too, and this is where Jean and I are very different. She can contemplate cruel necessities of this type. Of the two of us, she's the pragmatic one, and I wonder if she'd leave me in the dark, as well, if she could. Probably. That's a hard truth to face. _I'll do my best,_ I tell her.

Kneeling in front of me, she strokes my cheek. "Scott," she says aloud, "I wouldn't leave you to wonder. Really."

I press my forehead to hers. "But you'd leave your parents?"

"I told you why. You have some defense. They don't." She sits back on her heels. _Will you break the news to them?_

_Jean,_ _you're asking me to go to your parents in order to lie about the fact you died._ I sigh, and add -- emphatically -- _I don't know if I can do that!_

_I know it's asking a lot . . ._

_Yes, it is! I know what it feels like, to lose your family._

And she has the good grace to look embarrassed. _All right. Let's talk about that later. I still need to go to Washington._

_That's fine. I need to go, too. I need to see the professor._

She nods, and it's settled.  
  


***

"You comin' back, Red?"

I jump and try to pretend that I didn't, that I heard him approaching from behind. Turning, hands on hips, I glare. I'm dressed in a shirt of Scott's and the same sweat pants, and we're readying a car to drive to Washington. The little Russian girl Ilyana seems to have retained her English for more than twenty-four hours and Scott feels comfortable enough to leave, but just now, he went back inside to fetch the cat and I'm loading the trunk when the lion-man appears. And I didn't hear. My ego is offended. "Why do you want to know?" I ask in response to his question.

"Kid likes you."

I roll my eyes. "Gee. I'd never have guessed. I don't suppose it occurred to you that I like him, too?"

His smile is genuine, and fierce. "Y'ain't comfortable here."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"Yer angry, too."

Hands still on hips, I just glare. He's starting to get on my nerves.

"We ain't your enemies, kid. Even Ro."

My smile is wry. "I don't think she'll be sad to see the back of me."

"She's still carryin' a torch for Scott."

"I know." In truth, I hadn't known, not for sure, but I'd suspected. Or maybe I just can't imagine why anyone would willingly give him up when I've twisted myself and my loyalties into knots to keep him.

Sabretooth pulls over a stool and sits down on it; it squeaks beneath his weight. "So -- you comin' back?"

"I don't know," I tell him, honestly. "There are still things that need to be done." I've been giving some thought all morning to just what things. "I'm not sure they" -- I gesture vaguely to the house beyond the garage -- "would approve." I don't include him in the 'they.' I think he'd understand.

He nods, thoughtfully. "Maybe. Don't mean you can't come back here eventually." He shifts on the stool. "You got skills we could use, and experience. Even Ro said as much this mornin'. She's a good leader, has real talent, but she's green."  


And I'm not; I follow his meaning. Yet I've been working on my own for a long time, even as part of the Brotherhood, and I wonder if I could work with a team, especially under Polaris. Sabretooth just made it clear that he might be inviting me to join them, but Polaris is and will remain the leader. Not that I'd want the responsibility.

I look down. "I'll think about it," I tell him.

"You do that." But he doesn't move. His eyes rove up and down me and I'm reminded again of the look he gave me in the plane, and whatever I told myself last night about not defining myself by my relationship to Scott, I suddenly want to hang a sign around my neck that says, 'Property of Scott Summers.' If I should come back, it might not be Polaris I'd have to worry about.

"Don't look at me like that."

His smile is lazy. "You don't like it?"

"I'm not up for grabs."

"Never thought you was, darlin'. Don't mean I can't appreciate."

"Appreciate what I am or what I could be?" I snarl.

"I ain't lookin' at what could be. I'm lookin' at what's in front of me. You're a pretty woman, Red." And I find it interesting that it's not my skin he picked out to coin a nickname. "I can see why he's crazy about'cha. I ain't gonna interfere with that."

I nod, glad we cleared that up. A door opens and we both turn to see Scott striding across the garage floor towards us, his cat in his arms. He frowns a little. "Logan," he says, aloud. So the big man is named Logan. I'd wondered.

"Scott," he replies, standing and backing away from Scott -- or more precisely, from the cat in Scott's arms who's laid his ears back. Sabretooth towers over us both but he's afraid of Thutmose? "Just keepin' the lady company. Tell Chuck we miss him." And he strolls away, coat flapping behind him.

Lips pursed, Scott looks at me, shifting the cat to sign, _Was he bothering you?_

Smiling, I shake my head, no, and when I look up again, find doubt on his face. I do believe he's jealous. Crossing to his side, I lay a hand on his forearm and kiss his cheek, then sign,_ I don't like my men that furry._ I kiss him again, on the mouth, and he's the one smiling now as I take the keys from his fingers and walk around to the driver's side of the shiny red antique Corvette. He settles into the passenger seat and Thutmose takes up a position between his feet on the floorboard. We tear out of the garage, headed south. This is, I think, the first time we've ever taken a long trip together. Our lives suddenly seem full of firsts, and it's appropriate that, as we pass the school's gate, I shift into my new form for the first time, too. "What do you think? Can you live with this for the foreseeable future?"

He eyes me, taking in the change. It's completely different from most of my previous avatars. _As long as you still go back to you when it's safe. _When we stop at a gas station, it's a Japanese woman he holds the door for.

  


***

  
It's Warren who opens the hotel door, and he's got a big bruise on his cheekbone, but otherwise he looks okay. I give him a hug and he ushers us in, looking curiously at Jean in her new form -- and I still find myself glancing twice, too -- but he doesn't question it. I wonder if he knows who it is.  
Xavier does. Dressed in pajamas and a robe, he's sitting up in his wheelchair. "Scott," he says, both aloud and in my head. "Ms. Grey." Jean starts. "Please have a seat." I sit down on the divan and Jean settles beside me. She's still wearing her new face, even if the clothes are (this time) real enough. "Please," the professor says, "you can relax here."

She glances at me, and then at Warren, who's making us something to drink. _Go ahead_, I sign.

Shrugging, she shifts, blurring and becoming blue. "Much better," Xavier says, smiling slightly. He turns his eyes to me. "It seems that I missed the excitement?"

_I think you and Warren had some of your own._

"There is that," he replies, dryly.

Warren approaches to hand me a cup of coffee -- he knows what I want without asking -- then raises eyebrows at Jean in silent question, perfectly gracious and not a hint of surprise that she's here. But that's Warren. I recall his words from a few days ago and doubt he's suddenly decided to trust her -- whatever he sees or doesn't see of the future -- but he'd never be overtly rude. "Just water?" she requests, "If you have it?" He nods and fetches bottled water for her, then joins us.

_How are you?_ I ask Xavier as Warren settles himself neatly, plucking at his dress slacks. Never a hair out of place or an inappropriate wrinkle. People who know him less well think him shallow.

"I'm well enough to come home, if my watchdog will permit it." Xavier shoots Warren an exasperated glance, and I hide a smile. He turns serious then, and addresses Jean. "Ms. Grey, let me thank you. Without your help, I doubt Erik could have been stopped. I know it wasn't an easy decision for you -- or an easy realization, what he was really up to."

Frowning, Jean looks down and doesn't respond. Xavier continues. "That wasn't an 'I told you so.' I also realize that this places you in a difficult position with regard to the future. "

She glances up and they lock gazes for a few moments. I get the impression they're having a conversation that I'm not privy to, and I look at Warren, but he's examining his nails. I sigh. Being deaf, I'm often cut out of things unintentionally, so when it's done on purpose by people who ought to know better, I'm annoyed. Even if I shouldn't be.

Jean's heard the sigh, and lays a hand on my knee even as Xavier turns and smoothly asks me about the mansion and the students. He's not going to apologize; some things are none of my business, I suppose. After that, there's not much more to say, and we need to get back to my place so I can feed the cat. We've already been to Jean's apartment. We went there first, though it took her hours of watching and casing in various forms, with me stuck waiting in the car, before she'd get anywhere near it. But now, she has her clothes and other necessities at my apartment.

Before we leave, I find a moment to take Warren aside. _Jean's worried . . ._ I sign.

He nods. "She should be."

_She's in danger?_

"What do you think? All you need for that is common sense not prescience, Scott."

And he's right. I glance back to where Jean's talking to the professor again. _Is she going to join us?_

He shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe not."

_You're a lot of help._

His smile is wry.

_Is the Registration Act going to pass now?_

But he doesn't reply, just moves me towards the door where Jean is waiting, back in her new form. "I'll see you again," he tells her. She raises an eyebrow, and we leave.

_You know he knows stuff,_ she signs in the elevator. _Doesn't it creep you out?_

_I'm used to it. And he knows less that you think. He just likes to pretend._ When we reach the car, she takes the keys from me, and I guess I should start getting used to that. I smile at the thought. I could get used to Jean chauffeuring me around.

And thus, I return to my normal life, or as normal as it can be with the vote on Registration due later that week and Jean living with me openly. For three days after our return to Washington, I wake up beside her, eat with her, spend the whole day with her. She merges almost seamlessly into my life, as if she were always meant to fill that space, and I'm deliriously happy. For three days.

My cynical side knows it won't last, and I wait for the other shoe to drop. Eventually it does. I wake late and lazy on the fourth morning, a Thursday, and I'm the only one in the bed. Jerking upright, I stare around. The clock says it's after ten in the morning, and at first, I think maybe she's up already, puttering about. But I know better. Being deaf, I've developed a sixth sense for the presence of others, and I can tell I'm alone.

Grabbing a robe, I go into the kitchen and find the note she left me taped to the coffee-maker -- fixed and ready to brew -- and I notice that her coffee mug is still there on the counter with mine. Note in hand, unopened, I dash around the place like a fool, checking. Most of her belongings are still in the apartment, too. Frustrated, upset, and angry -- but also relieved -- I collapse on my living room couch, tearing open the note.

_I have to go for a while, love. All the usual disclaimers apply. Don't look for me, don't try to contact me. I'll get in touch with  
you when I can.__ I've talked to your professor and he's going to speak with my parents, so you don't need to worry about that.  
He says he can protect them from Erik. My mother will call you in a few days about a funeral, and you can bury Jean Grey.  
Mystique is no more.  
  
_ _Now and forever,  
__Your "Phoenix_"  
  
Thutmose has joined me and butts at the hand holding her letter. Sighing, I drop it onto the couch and pet the cat, who crawls into my lap. "It's just you and me again," I say aloud to him. I can feel his purr against my hand and I reach for the remote, turning on the TV, flipping channels. I have other things I could do, should do, but lack energy. So I sit on the couch all day, not even bothering to dress. Around five in the evening, the local news comes on, and the headlining story is the rally for mutant rights earlier that day down on the Mall. I should have been there, as the MRA will be voted on tomorrow, but I'd forgotten all about it and doubt I'd have been ready to face a crowd anyway. The reporter blathers on about who of the famous appeared, and who didn't (my name is mentioned), and I apathetically scan captions until one particular name catches my eye. Sitting up, dislodging Thutmose, I stare in shock at the face on the screen. An impossible face, and an impossible name.Senator Robert Kelly.He's saying something about being wrong and having changed his mind, but I can't quite follow the captions because I'm too busy staring at his face. Kelly is _dead_. And I'm debating getting up to message the professor when Kelly turns away, and a lightbulb flashes viridescent in his eyes. Anyone else would think it just an accidental effect. I know better.  
  
Shutting off the television, I rise to pace around the dim room. Outside, the sun is setting and I put my face in my hands.  
  
My girlfriend is masquerading as a U.S. Senator. Should I be horrified or relieved? Hers might be the swing vote that saves us all. Yet whatever else I feel, I'm not surprised, and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts, the professor knows all about it. How did my life get this complicated?  
  
Rising, I rub my eyes. "Come on," I say to the cat and head for my office computer. I have a letter to write. Maybe she told me not to contact her, but she didn't tell me Dr. Summers couldn't set up an appointment with 'Senator Kelly.' We'd been on different sides for three years and I was sick and tired of it. If her underwear was in my drawer and her coffee mug on my counter, then she was stuck with me letting her know she wasn't alone in this, whatever reservations I might have about the morality of it.  
  
http://kelly.senate.gov/index.cfm?c=email&which=Standard"  
  
_Prefix:_ Dr. _(Ex: Mr. and Mrs.)  
First name:_ Scott  
_Last name: _ Summers . . . 

_ Please write your message. (fewer than 10,000 characters) _

Dr. Summers requests an appointment with Senator Kelly at his earliest convenience Friday morning, if possible . . .  
  


* * *

**Afternotes:** There are, of course, more swaps in this one, though not everyone's powers have altered. Ororo has Magneto's powers, Magneto has Jean's full power (different codename), Victor Creed and Logan are switched out -- taking away Logan's healing factor would alter his personality too much, but I decided to play on the namesakes. Wolverines are _not_ pack animals. Piotr Rasputin's power is unchanged, but Ilyana has Rogue's, and yes, I'm aware that Rogue _can_ absorb Piotr even in metal form, but as with Scott and Alex, I'm guessing that if they were related, it may make him partly immune. Hank's power is unchanged, Xavier's power is unchanged. Warren's power is Destiny's (or Frank's, if you prefer), and rather than Toad, I've used Dominic Petros, Avalanche -- here called Zeus, with Storm's powers. And yes, the image used for Dominic is John Stamos, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos' husband. I simply couldn't resist the joke, since he is Greek. Mystique has Kurt's powers (and appearance). Incidently, I'm assuming that Ororo is still at a beginning stage with her powers, so she _can't_ yet do everything Magneto could in the film.  
  
As for the Biblical references tossed about by Erik and Jean, the revolt of Absalom against his father King David has an all-too-often overlooked prelude ... David's eldest son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar. When confronted by this fact, David didn't want to deal and refused to mete out justice. Absalom, Tamar's full brother (and David's third son), rebelled in frustration. And finally, the .gov URL at the end is, in fact, standard for contacting the a U.S. Senator by email, but "kelly.senate.gov" won't get you anywhere. :-)

**Feedback always welcome (of course).  
**

**A seventh and final epilogue story was to wrap up the series, but so far, it doesn't seem that anyone is actually reading the story on ff.net, so I may not post the last part here, as it involves extra work creating an ff.net-friendly html version, which is pointless effort if no one's reading this venue. (E.g., if you are reading it here, you might want to let me know that.) ; **  


  



	7. A Rose by Any Other Name Still Has Thorn...

**A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME STILL HAS THORNS  
****Minisinoo  
  
**

**Notes:** Last installment in the How the Leopard Changed Her Spots Powerswap.  


* * *

  
It was only much later that the truth of the whole matter finally occurred to me. At the time, I reacted in exactly the way he'd known I would. I left him. And that was what he wanted. 

Let me back up to the day of the vote on mutant registration. That Friday morning, I walked into Senator Kelly's office to find Scott already there, waiting on me. Kelly's secretary, Christine, had leapt up as if to run interference and get me -- who she believed to be Kelly -- into my office, apologizing for the fact that Scott wouldn't leave and did I want her to call security?

"No, it's all right," I told her, patting her shoulders reassuringly (and pushing her subtly away). Then I approached Scott. I'd assumed he'd figure out what I'd done. "Dr. Summers, I can't say I'm surprised to see you."

His smile answered, 'I just bet you aren't.' But he didn't try to sign. We were in public, more or less, and Kelly shouldn't be able to read sign language, so Scott had to speak aloud. "Senator. Do you have a moment?"

"I just ducked in here to pick up some file folders," I explained. "I'm afraid I don't have time to chat."

"This will only take a moment. Maybe I could go with you while you look for your folders?"

I glared at him. I could've said no, and Christine would've called security to escort him out. It's what I should have done. Even if Senator Kelly had changed his political tune, no one would've been surprised if he didn't want to speak to Scott Summers. 

But Jean Grey did want to speak to Scott Summers. Desperately. So I ignored common sense and nodded, turning for the office and letting him follow me in before shutting the door -- slamming it, really. They'd think I was mad, which might prevent us from being interrupted for a few minutes. Just five minutes. That was all I needed.

With the door shut, I turned and let my form ripple back into myself. Scott watched, his lips thin, as I leaned in to kiss him. He allowed it, but didn't kiss back. Worried, I pulled away.

_Have you lost your mind?_ he signed, rough and fast. _You were worried your former teammates might find out you'd survived. Well, you may as well have shot off fireworks that spell, 'Here I am! Come and get me!'_

_But if I hadn't done this, the MRA would pass,_ I shot back. _Now, the fact that Kelly himself has switched sides has made the fence-sitters reconsider._

_But the Brotherhood will know it's you!_

_So? They're in prison -- all but Wolverine, and he never knew Kelly died._ _I told no one but Erik, in fact. This had to be done; you know that. You also know I was the only one who could do it._

He didn't answer for a moment, then signed, _Xavier knew, too, didn't he? He knew you were going to do this!_

_I talked to him, but he didn't ask me to make this choice. It's my choice._

Scott turned away, giving me his back so I couldn't argue further. He was so angry, he shook. I'd never seen him so upset, not even when he'd first learned I was Brotherhood. Finally, he spun around and all but shouted with his hands -- _They'll KILL you! Don't you get that? They'll _kill_ you, and you can't come back to me after because that's the first place they'll look!_

I made an exasperated sound, which, even if he couldn't hear, he could read in my expression. _You interact with hundreds of people a week, Scott. How will they know which one is me?_

_Hundreds of people don't live with me!_

Ah. _Well, we managed before -- for three years. We can do it again; we'll be even more careful._

For a moment, I thought he might've screamed aloud in frustration. But all he did was turn on his heel, yank the door open, and stalk out of my -- Kelly's -- office.

I didn't make anything of it then. We'd fought before, many times, and it was another month and a half before I could lay down my masquerade as Robert Kelly. Scott didn't try to contact me in all that time, but I wasn't worried. He knew I was undercover. The day before Kelly was to 'disappear,' I sent Scott a message to meet me the next day in the Natural History Museum's coffee shop, for lunch. I arrived at noon, but he wasn't there. I waited until the museum closed, but he never came. 

I feared he might not have gotten the message -- that had happened before, as well -- so I tried again, tried twice more, in fact, to the same results. Then I went after him.

When I let myself into Scott's apartment wearing the face of the building maintenance man, I found a pretty young woman with strawberry blonde hair wandering about his living room in a white terry bathrobe. She'd obviously just gotten out of the shower. 

I was so shocked, I stopped dead with my mouth open even as she let out a little squeak like a strangled kitten -- that awful 'girlie' noise I detest so. For a moment, I feared I'd gotten the wrong apartment, but it was Scott's furniture all around us. "Where's Dr. Summers?" I asked even as she demanded, "Who are you?"

"Building maintenance." I flashed the badge I'd duplicated. 

"He didn't tell me you were coming."

"It wasn't a scheduled visit. I'm just checking duct work. He's not here?" 

"He had an errand to run." She flipped her rose-gold hair in a mixture of disdain and provocation, and her robe slipped enough to show that she was probably bare beneath it. "He'll be back soon."

For several moments, I simply couldn't speak, my head close to exploding with disbelieving rage. What was this slut doing in my home? 

Except it wasn't my home and never would be. It was Scott's. That realization washed over me like a flood. Erik had been right. Scott had just used me, and now that I'd served my purpose, he'd moved on. What did he want with a scaly blue girl when he could have Beach Babette . . . or whatever the hell her name actually was.

"I'll come back later." Let her think I just didn't want to be in the apartment with a naked girl when her boyfriend wasn't around. "Tell him . . . Tell him Gene came by to look at his heat." 

She eyed me from beneath lashes. "Okay."

I stormed out of the building and down to a pawn shop, where I bought a pistol and ammunition, then spent the night watching his building. I never saw Scott return -- maybe he'd come back during the time I'd been gone -- but 'Babette' left the next morning, walking three blocks to a parking garage. I trailed her through the crowds, but the parking garage was empty. Hiding behind a column, I watched as she paused to unlock her vehicle. Foolish girl -- not checking around her at all. I had a clear shot, and raised the gun. 

But I didn't shoot. It wasn't that I couldn't kill. I'd killed multiple times in the line of 'duty,' but I refused to kill for this. I told myself he wasn't worth it, and neither was she, but the truth was, it hurt too much. I was too humiliated to play out the scene like a bad soap opera and just wanted to hibernate with my pain. So I wiped the gun free of fingerprints and tossed it away -- it wasn't registered to my name anyway. Jean Grey was dead. Then I approached her wearing my _real_ face. At my footstep, she glanced over and sucked in a shocked breath.

"You should pay more attention to your surroundings, Miss," I told her. "Anyone could be following you." And I left her there. 

The next day, I left Washington itself with a one-way ticket and no luggage.

  
  


More than a year has passed since I've seen Scott. At first, he continued to define my life, even though he was effectively out of it. Everything I did seemed somehow to be in response to him. I quit eating Italian food, because he liked it so, and I ate a lot more Chinese, because he didn't. I stopped on the west coast, because he was on the east. I bought a dog instead of a cat, though I gave it away again inside a month because having a dog tied me down too much. I even wound up with a job as an ASL translator. I have to earn a living, and Erik no longer pays my bills.

My real job, however, still involves helping mutants when I can, and doing whatever it takes to throw monkey wrenches into the plans of anti-mutant groups. The paperwork for an anti-mutant demonstration march in Palo Alto was accidentally sent through a shredder. A lab in Seattle that pioneered tests for evidence of the X-gene in amniotic fluid had a little lab 'accident,' and burned to the ground. A TV commercial for an anti-mutant politician from Orange County was wrongly marked as blank and taped over before it was copied and sent to television stations. And so on. None of these is terribly far reaching, and I know they're temporary -- mere petty vandalism. But I do what I can. My days of high-profile spying are over. 

As I'd expected, neither Raven nor Erik remained long in custody, though as far as I know, Zeus is still there. Erik contacted me once telepathically -- to thank me for bringing about the defeat of the MRA, and to let me know that he won't seek me out as long as I stay clear of his business. It's a truce, of sorts. It was also proof that I can't hide from him, no matter what face I wear. So far, I've abided by his request, though if he took another mutant girl, I don't know what I'd do.

Lilith, of course, doesn't share Lucifer's ideological equanimity. He won't tell her where I am, but if she can track me down, I know she'll try to kill me for betraying them. So far, I've stayed below her radar and can probably continue to do so as long as she doesn't enlist the aid of Wolverine. I just hope she has better things to occupy her time than revenge. 

Charles Xavier contacted me once, as well, but not telepathically. He used the U.S. Postal Service, though I'm sure he didn't find my current address through flatline means. He wanted to know if I'd join the X-Men. Politely, I refused, and he hasn't tried to contact me since.

And so fourteen months have gone by. I think of Scott less compulsively now, and with less pain. Yet as the pain lessens, common sense reasserts itself and I reconsider what happened the previous spring -- at which point, portions of the equation cease to add up. Suddenly, I find myself obsessing again, but in a different way. Scott had bargained on me reacting, not acting, and now it seems obvious that I was played. Why, though, and whether I was played from the start or only at the end, isn't completely clear. So for a second time, I buy a one-way ticket, but my leaving isn't sudden. I've worked too hard to establish my new identity. Madelyne Prior has a driver's license, passport, work history, and birth records. Waste not, want not, so I give my proper two weeks' notice and sell most of my belongings before I leave. I don't need much, and can live off savings and proceeds for a while, even in Washington. 

Once I arrive, I begin to shadow Scott -- stalk him, truth be told, just as I did over four years ago. It's not difficult; he's not a suspicious man, and aside from a brief burst of fame following his senate speech, he lives quietly. He continues to translate for museums, and eats twice a week at the Greek Deli with a book for company. He goes to the local deaf theatre, which he loves, and sometimes to a deaf bar, of which he's not so fond, and still reads six foreign-language newspapers on the train in the morning.

There's not a hint of Beach Babette. There's not a hint of a girl in his life at all, in fact. He's thinner and his shoulders are bowed. He doesn't smile as much and loses himself looking out of windows. He's not happy. 

I settle on my plan of attack. I get a job, then rent an apartment -- in his building, on the same floor, which was three-quarters fortune and one-quarter select spying -- and move in on a day when he's home. Since he won't hear the racket, I make sure to bump up against his door, hoping the knock sensor is still attached. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he's opened the door to look out, and spots me down the hall amid boxes. He comes to investigate with his ever-present pad for notes. I pretend to almost run right into him before seeing him. I grab a pad, too.

_Sorry, I'm deaf_, he's scribbled on his. _But can I help? I live down the hall._

I hold up my own pad. _Sorry, I'm deaf --_ I'd begun. Now I tap the hearing aids I'd bought (for show), and he breaks out laughing.

We spend two hours visiting in ASL over tea in my new kitchen. I spin out my story for him as Madelyne Prior. I think he's buying it all. He helps me carry up the last of my boxes. We visit some more, and I remember why I fell in love with him, falling all over again. Just before he leaves for the evening, he turns at the door to sign, _I'm glad you're home, Jean. I've missed you._

Then he walks out and shuts the door behind him.

For a full ten seconds, I'm bereft of any ability to respond. Then shock propels me into motion. Running to my door, I yank it open and shout, "How did you know?" -- realizing immediately the futility of the gesture. Pulling my door shut behind me, I scuttle down the hall to his and bang on it. Pause, then bang again. Pause, then bang a third time. It opens in the middle of my banging. 

He's wearing the look of the cat who ate the canary. I want to slap him. Instead, I just grab hold and don't let go. He pulls me inside and shuts the door, and it's as if a year and a half hadn't passed. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," I tell him, fists bunched in his shirt, pounding his chest. He smells so good, sweaty as he is, that I just want to eat him alive. He's running hands through my hair -- red hair, the same as my Jean incarnation. 'Madelyne's' face is broader, hair shorter, eyes bluish instead of brown, and there are freckles on her skin. She's shorter, too, and a bit wider in hip and breast, but I kept my basic cast of face, and red hair. Nostalgia, perhaps. Pushing me back a little, his thumbs trace my cheekbones and he smiles with real warmth.

"How did you know?" I ask him again, where he can see. 

_Lots of little clues._

_I thought I was a better spy than that._

_You're a great spy. But I'm Sherlock Holmes._ He's laughing.

_Humble, aren't you?_

He ignores that to ask, _Did you lock your door?_

"No." 

_Go lock your door. _And he turns away, headed for the kitchen.

I do as he says, coming back with my head spinning and my heart in free-fall. I keep swallowing because I'm so nervous. I can hear him in the kitchen, and Thutmose comes to greet me, trails me in there. I circle around so he can see me approach in his peripheral vision. He's making more tea, his mug -- and mine -- on the counter. Reaching out, I finger the mug. "You kept it." 

He's watching me, and signs, _I kept everything._

I feel tears in my eyes. _What the hell was that last spring?_

_I had to make you leave. You know why._

I slam the mug down and, now, I do slap him. He's surprised, but not really, and raises a hand to his cheek. "Feel better?" 

"You didn't have to drive me away!"

"Yes, I did. You're too confident in your own abilities sometimes, Jean. If you'd kept hanging around here, Erik _would_ have found you as soon as he got out." 

"He found me anyway."

Scott's eyes widen. I go on, signing, _He's a telepath, remember? He found me on the other side of the continent. We have a truce. For now._

_One Raven will honor?_

I don't reply to that. _How did you know it was me?_

His lips tip up. _I wasn't sure, at first. I've wondered if you'd come back -- half hoped you would, half hoped you wouldn't. But I've been . . . anticipating, I guess._

_I've been trailing you for three months,_ Sherlock. I stress the name. 

He eyes me, still smiling. _You haven't spoken to me, though._

_Well, no._

The tea kettle whistles and I start. Seeing, he turns back to it and pours hot water into our mugs, hands me mine.

Sitting down at the little eat-in table, he signs, _You are good, Jean. It took me a good two hours tonight before I was sure. But it started with your signing, actually. You're better than when you left -- you've been practicing -- but you still don't sign like someone who's been doing it all her life, though you told me, as Madelyne, that you'd been hard of hearing since childhood._

_And you kept starting, as if you could hear noises. I've seen people try to fake deafness before and starting at noises always gives them away. So I tried asking you some questions that I knew you'd answer truthfully, and some that -- playing Madelyne -- I knew you wouldn't. Your eyes tracked in different directions . . . a good sign you were lying, or at least not sure of your answer._

_Then there were your gestures. You're an excellent mimic, but some of your gestures are uniquely yours. The way you hold your hand when you're pointing_ -- he demonstrates -- _so the wrist is cocked at a 90-degree angle instead of extended straight. It's odd enough for me to remember. And the way you lick your lips and then purse them, and the way you rub here, right between your brows when you're tired and trying to think. Those things never changed, no matter what body you were in._

I'm astonished by his level of observation, but then, Scott reads body language as clearly as he reads anything else, and he's been accustomed to seeing me in a variety of forms before. "I still don't know why you felt you had to trick me like you did." I can feel the anger rushing back, making me hot. "Who was that girl anyway? Did you really sleep with her? You took a terrible chance, Scott. I might have killed you both, or her at least."

_She's someone I worked with, at a museum. And no, I didn't sleep with her. I stayed in her place for a few days and she stayed in mine. I told her I was trying to get rid of this woman who was following me around. I explained a little, about your ability to change forms -- though I don't think she expected you to be a _guy_ when you showed up. Anyway, I knew you wouldn't hurt her._

My mouth drops open. "And just how could you 'know' that? You can't read the future!"

_I know you. You wouldn't do that._

"What? Scott, I've killed people before for less."

He looks away. _But not for that. You're not a murderer._

My lips thin and I reach across the table to turn his head, force him to see my answer. "Scott, haven't you ever heard of a crime of passion? You fool. I bought a gun. Did you know that? I bought a gun and followed her back to her car." His face has gone pale. "I wouldn't have missed, if I'd decided to shoot."

"She said she saw you finally," he whispers, "in your real form. She didn't tell me about a gun." 

"She saw me, but she never saw the gun. I just gave her a warning. Still, it was a close thing. I _could_ have killed her --"

"-- but you didn't. You wouldn't --" 

"Stop it!" I let his chin go and he rubs it. "You refuse to see that part of me. You always have!" I'm almost shouting. "You want me to be something I'm not." Leaning over the table I get right in his face, almost too close for him to read my lips, but I try to enunciate despite my anger. I keep my voice level. "You've never asked me how many people I've killed."

"I don't want to know!" 

"Twenty-seven, Scott. I've killed twenty-seven people."

"I don't want to know that!" He jumps up and walks away, out into the living room. I follow. I'm not going to let him run from this. Grabbing his arm, I swing him around. "Look at me! Look at _me_." I shift into my own form. "This is who I am. I used to think you loved me for myself, but you never have. You've loved your own dream. You refuse to see me, the me beneath the blue skin." 

"You're not a monster."

I'm oddly amused by this, and pull in my chin, snorting softly. "No. But I am a soldier, after a fashion. I've killed people, and I'll do it again, if I think I have to. I'm not one of the 'good guys,' Scott. I'm not one of the bad guys, either. Life isn't that neat, and my name is Jean _Grey_. I love you for who you are. I need you to love me for who I am. What I don't need is someone who thinks he knows what's best for me and tries to manipulate me, not talk to me. Erik did that. I'm not with Erik anymore, am I?" 

I back up a few steps and he's looking scared. "Don't worry, I'm not leaving. Well, I think I am leaving just now, but I moved back across the country for you, and I signed a lease for the apartment down the hall. I have a job. I'm not running away again.

"But we're going to start over, Scott. I think we need to start over. And you're going to hear the truth about me you didn't want to hear before, like the twenty-seven people. Did I like doing it? No. And I remember all their names. I don't take killing lightly -- when I do, then I'll become a murderer. But I still killed them, and you need to know that. You don't have to like it, or approve, but you need to know it or you can't love _me_." 

He doesn't respond at all. He seems . . . shell-shocked. I don't think this is quite the happy ending he was expecting. But I don't believe in happy endings. I believe in real endings -- or real beginnings -- and I leave him then, shifting back into my Madelyne form to return to my new apartment.

I don't know how things are going to turn out. I want to say that I hope I didn't make a mistake -- except I know I didn't, even if it might mean losing him in the long run. Yet I think we work well together. I need his idealism, his belief in happy endings, and he needs my reality, and real beginnings. 

I found a note pushed under my door this morning. It reads:

_The gentleman down the hall in 2570-E would like to request a date of the lady who lives in 2570-H. Friday at 7pm. Evening wear. Real clothes are preferable._

The last sentence makes me smile. Sometimes happy endings and real beginnings can meet in the middle and live contentedly ever after.  


* * *

**Afterwards:** When I first issued the PowerSwap challenge, I had no real idea it was going to catch on like it did, nor did I have plans to write a story myself -- much less a whole novella retelling of X1. It's been a fun romp and a challenge to see both how well I can keep the characters IN character, even while changing such a significant thing as their mutation, and also how well I could take the same basic plot and recast it to fit the new set of powers. The image of Scott is from a capture by Meridian, and the blue Jean was done by Erin  


But the tale has now come to an end. I have no intentions of doing X2. BUT if anyone wants more of Cypher Scott, a role-playing game has sprung up, based on the PowerSwap challenge. It's called X-Axis, on Great Journal. I don't run it, and the RPG is based on the general PowerSwap idea, not my installment in particular; in addition, the basic set-up is rather different (the MRA passed). But I do play Cypher Scott there. It's a chance to continue with the character and see how he develops. (Jean in X-Axis is not Mystique, but has Kurt's powers and Scott and Jean have a brother/sister relationship, not a romance.)  
  


**Feedback always welcome (of course). Let me know what you thought of the series.**  
****


End file.
